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Gelede masks from Benin: how to appease powerful women

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Benin is a West African country with a strong craft tradition. In the past, craft guilds specialising in brass, ivory, wood, embroidery and leather resided in palace of the Oba (king). They mingled with the leopard hunters, astrologers, drummers, chiefs and priests. Unlike other courtly crafts in Africa, their traditions thrive, particularly in the production of dramatic Gelede masks.

One of the most important festivals in Benin is the Gelede, which honours female elders. Key to this festival is a dance with a costume that consists of a mask (aworan), headwrap (oja) and leg rattles (iku) which protect their wearer against aje. In this festival a mask is worn by men masquerading as women in order to please the mothers, particularly the destructive aje who otherwise might use witchcraft against them. It is seen to have developed in the late eighteenth century in the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal society.

The masks represent ‘children’ of the mothers and so reflect the diversity of the world. Sometimes masks satirise foreigners, exaggerating their facial features.

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Gelede masks are still made in southern Benin. They are exported to Cuba and Brazil in particular. Apart from curios, it is interesting to consider what possibilities these masks might have. Can their makers be commissioned to use masks as statements about the world at large?

Notes

  • Henry John Drewal ‘Gelede Masquerade: Imagery and Motif’ African Arts Vol. 7, No. 4 (Summer, 1974), pp. 8-19+62-63+95-96
  • Thanks to Martin Tonoukon for images.
Notices

Craft jumps out of the box in South Korea

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The 2009 Cheongju International Craft Biennale under its current director Dr. Ihnbum Lee seeks to position craft broadly within the arts as a unifying element. Ihnbum Lee claims that various art forms have been ‘boxed in’ to separate disciplines, making it difficult to experience their common nature. For Lee, craft offers an alternative to the commodification that has both put the planet in peril and separated arts from themselves. Craft in this biennale is engaged in ‘a search for meaning in a tortuous era’.

So how will craft connect with other art forms, such as dance, music and poetry? The Biennale contains several elements:

  • Pressing matter, a craft exhibition that feature works which diffuse energy and include diverse perspectives of producer and consumer, youth and maturity, the egalitarian and the elite, the classical and the romantic, the developed and the developing world
  • Dissolving views, a space for connecting object with performance
  • The river within us the sea all around us, whose title is borrowed from T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets, is a community arts program with the citizens of Cheongju
  • Canadian guest pavilion
  • International symposium on 24 September with 14 craft scholars

Of particular interest is the way these themes have an underlying poetic vision, associating the object with flows of nature in particular. This suggests the possibility of a uniquely Korean perspective on modern craft.

It seems important in an event with such a substantial vision for craft that there is an open dialogue to reflect on what emerges from this event. Travel has become less possible for many people, but the organisers are trying to attract craft practitioners with a Home Stay program (details on the website).

So what will emerge when craft springs out of the box? Jack in the box? Pandora’s box? We look with interest.