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African and Oceanic Art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting
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Helmet Mask
Northern New Ireland, 19th century
Wood, paint, beeswax, fiber, shell; H: 40 in. (102 cm)
Provenance: Collected by Giovanni Bettanin, before 1904; Ethnographical Museum of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary; [Emile Deletaille, New York, 1984], Barbier-Mueller collection, since 1984
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Virtually all of the intricately carved and painted masks and sculpture of northern New Ireland are associated with malagan—a complex series of ceremonies and related art forms. Throughout life, individuals compete to acquire the rights, similar to Western copyrights, to create specific malagan images and perform the rituals associated with them. Malagan ceremonies are held to mark nearly all important stages of a person's life. The most numerous and striking masks and carvings, however, are created and used in connection with an individual's final memorial ceremony, which often occurs months or years after his or her death. The masks and carvings essentially constitute a sort of visual résumé, demonstrating the person's lifetime achievements in obtaining various types of malagan.
Likely employed during one or more stages of such a memorial ceremony, this malagan mask was worn over the head like a helmet. It is unusual for its highly naturalistic face, which possibly portrays a specific individual and was created by modeling beeswax over a carved wood core. The snakes, whose sinuous bodies weave in and out of the two vertical panels above the ears, may symbolize the gradual ebbing of the life force within the human body.
See the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History to learn more about New Ireland.
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