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Tlingit Mask, Painted Wood and Bone, 1825, Alaska, United States
The Tlingit are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is Lingit, meaning “People of the Tides”. They have a matrilineal kinship system, with children considered born into the mother’s line.
Collection; The Masked Man: Photo Set Four
Photographer Unknown, (The Fur hat), Model Unknown
Central Yup’ik, Nepcetat Mask, Arctic Region, 1840-60. Wood, Swan Feathers, Snowy-Owl Feathers, Fox Teeth, Sealskin, Thong, Reed, Blood, Pigment, Ochre, Charcoal: Fenimore Museum, Cooperstown, New York
In all the classes of masks, the nepcetat or nepcetaq mask is ranked highest, being the most powerful mask. Each mask could only be used by its owner, and another person could not just take it and use it as effectively. Although the angalkuq or shaman would place the mask on his face without a string to hold it there, it would adhere to his face and not fall off even though he would bow down.
The Deer Head Mask Of Mexico
Fanciful headdresses were an essential component of performance costumes because they were crucial to the dancers’ perceived transformation into the personage or spirit being in whose guise they performed. In Veracruz, figurines depicting warriors and a wide variety of performers often wear full-head masks, which can be removed to reveal the person inside, such as the amazingly detailed head-mask of a deer.
Post-fire paint adorns the animal, with black-line curvilinear motifs on his long ear and bright blue-green pigment embellishing his upper lip. Large protuberances on his snout and the single horn atop his head suggest a composite zoomorph rather than a biologically accurate rendering.
The deer was an important Mesoamerican food source, and its hide was used for a variety of purposes including the wrapping of ritual bundles and as leaves (pages) for screen-fold manuscripts which contained all manner of knowledge-from history to religious mythology to astrology and astronomy. The deer also was the animal spirit form of the mother of the seminal Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl and of the wife of the maize god among the Classic Maya.
Photographer Unknown, (Carnival)
O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Boat
Alexis Salgues, Title Unknown, (Leopard Man)
Collection of Wooden Masks of the World
Masks in various forms (sacred, practical, or playful) have played a crucial historical role in the development of understandings about “what it means to be human”, because they permit the imaginative experience of “what it is like” to be transformed into a different identity (or to affirm an existing social or spiritual identity). Not all cultures have known the use of masks, but most of them have.
Photographer Unknoown, (The Unknown Masked Man)