A Baule mask from the Toumodi region

A Baule mask, Ivory Coast, collected in the Toumodi region; signs of ritual use. Certificate of origin and provenance.

The use of the Baule mask, for ritual and ceremonial performances: Baule masks are used in performances during important social events such as funerals, initiations, and agricultural festivals. The performances are accompanied by music, dance, and storytelling to honor ancestors, invoke blessings, or ensure community harmony.
For Entertainment and Social Commentary, as some masks are used in purely entertainment contexts, performing comedic or satirical roles during festivals. These performances may critique societal behaviors or celebrate communal values.
For mediation with the spirit world, as certain masks are believed to act as intermediaries between the living and the spiritual world. They are used to honor spirits or ancestors, ensuring their guidance and protection for the community. They have protective and purifying roles, and used in rituals to cleanse or protect the community from misfortune, illness, or malevolent spirits.
Initiation Rites: Baule masks play a role in initiation ceremonies where young individuals are introduced to the secrets and traditions of adulthood.

“To articulate historians, the most consistent features of Baule art is a kind of peaceful containment. Faces tend to have downcast eyes and figures most often hold their ams against the body. [...] Among their abundant art forms, the Baule people continue to place the greatest value on masks and figure sculptures, which remain the only sculptural art still widely used in Baule villages. While there is a difference between the Baule view of their objects and that of Western connoisseurs, there are points of agreement. Aesthetic appreciation is one: Baule artist, and individual owners of objects, certainly sometimes enjoy the beauty of these objects and the skill it took coproduce them. [...]

Ornaments above the face are chosen for their beauty and have no iconographic significance” p.141.

Lit: Baule: African Art, Western Eyes. Susan M.Vogel 1997.

"The Baule masks are not merely objects of beauty but active participants in a dynamic world, mediating between the human and the spiritual, the individual and the community, the past and the present."
Susan Vogel, Baule: African Art, Western Eyes

Height: 31 cm
Weight: 1,2 kg incl. stand