This week, the New Orleans Museum of Artwork (NOMA) opens New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations, a significant exhibition presenting the work of 4 artists working in cities throughout West Africa: Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa, Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah, David Sanou, and Hervé Youmbi.
The primary presentation of its sort, New African Masquerades presents a uncommon look into up to date West African masquerade by contextualizing the works of particular person artists inside a spread of social, financial, and non secular practices and analyzing their networks of viewership and alternate. Constituted of supplies together with wooden, fabric and materials, sequins, feathers, gourds, raffia, and cowry shells, the ensembles on view symbolize all kinds of masquerade practices and societies.
The time period “masquerade” has many alternative meanings throughout totally different cultures and communities and is loosely outlined as a broad set of practices whereby people and societies dance in full-body, multimedia ensembles. These ensembles are then activated in some ways, together with in performances, processions, and different ceremonies by both the masquerade artist or one other practitioner.
Importantly, New African Masquerades presents masquerade as a posh and various assortment of evolving up to date practices. Some masquerades — comparable to these of Bassey Nsa throughout the Ekpe Society of Calabar, Nigeria — maintain political and didactic significance; others — like Fofanah’s designs for Jollay and Ordehlay in Sierra Leone — are primarily social and have fun holidays. Nonetheless others are created to honor a life well-lived — as is the case of Sanou in Burkina Faso — or to critique — as Youmbi demonstrates. Some are non-public, and others are paraded by way of the streets. Opposite to many static museum displays, masquerade is sort of all the time outlined by motion, theatricality, and viewers participation.
Along with 13 full masquerade ensembles, the exhibition on the New Orleans Museum of Art contains pictures, recorded interviews, and an immersive video expertise, together with views of the ensembles being carried out and clips that includes the artists.
Created with the help and participation of the artists, masquerade societies, and their communities, the present and accompanying catalogue current a case research within the methodology of manufacturing a collaborative, cross-continental exhibition.
For extra info, go to noma.org.
