The Embodiment of Femininity: A Pwo Mask in the Fred and Rita Richman Collection of African Art at the High Museum

Mask (2002.294) from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, presents an opportunity to explore ideas of gender, performance, and materiality in Central African art. This mask is identified as a Chokwe Pwo mask, a mask type used primarily in boys’ initiation rites in which they transition to manhood (mukanda). This essay will present an overview of the cultural and social context in which the Mask was made and used, begin an analysis of its visual and material form and significance, and suggest conservation treatments to ready the object for display in the High Museum’s African art gallery. I will argue that, in addition to serving an important function when danced in mukanda, the Pwo mask aesthetically and materially refers to the girl’s initiation rites (ukule) in its embodiment of feminine beauty ideals.

The Mask is ten inches high; is composed of wood, fiber, metal, and pigment; and is dated to approximately 1900 CE, according to the High Museum accession file¹12002.294, Accession file 2002.283–2002.319 (figs. 1–2). The Mask comprises three primary components: a sculpted wooden face mask, a crocheted textile hood attached to the wooden component through holes around its perimeter, and a coiffure composed of fibers also attached to the wooden face mask. The mask depicts a woman’s facial features with nearly closed eyes and a slightly open mouth with visible teeth.²2These types of eye and mouth shapes align with style categories formulated by Marie-Louise Bastin. She described this eye type as “almond-shaped” and this type of mouth as “geometric” based on her formal analysis of Chokwe figurative sculpture, inspired by Louis Perrois’s approach to Fang and Kota reliquary figures (178, 181–183). See also Louis Perrois, “Note sur une méthode d’analyse ethno-morphologique des arts africains.” It is important to note that Manuel Jordán has revisited Bastin’s work and found that she had access to a limited corpus of Chokwe masks in her research, reducing the usefulness of applying her stylistic categories to the High Museum’s Mask. See Jordán, “Revisiting Pwo.” The artist rendered scarification marks on the chin, temples, cheeks, and forehead of the face mask through small geometric carvings that stand in slight relief from the mask’s smooth wooden surface.³3Facial scarification marks are no longer common among women in Chokwe society, according to Elisabeth L. Cameron’s field research in the late 1990s. She reports that women find these marks beautiful, but they served the purpose of familial or societal identification, in contrast to the bodily scarification marks bestowed during the girl’s initiation rites, which have an erotic function. Cameron suggests that the decline in women’s facial scarification allows them to better assimilate into external cultural situations, such as attending Christian church services (80); see also Bastin, 70. The figure’s ears are punctured with small holes, and a metal earring consisting of a short chain terminating in a metal coil dangles from the proper left ear only.⁴4Arjun Appadurai uses the term “cultural biography” to refer to an object’s life cycle through various social and cultural contexts, from its making and use through its commoditization and display. See Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. The inclusion of only one extant earring is present in other examples of Pwo masks in major museums and private collections (see figs. 3–5). The face mask has a slightly glossy surface with striations and grain patterns of the wood easily visible. Apart from the deep brown areas of the eyebrows, lips, and scarification marks, the face mask has a reddish surface coloration that I will suggest may be symbolically significant.

This mask is in a style identified as Chokwe, corresponding with the Chokwe ethno-linguistic group of peoples inhabiting a geographic region comprising the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo, northeastern Angola, and northwestern Zambia.⁵5Chokwe is spelled differently in various languages and written sources. I have chosen to follow Constantine Petridis’s explanation and justification for using Chokwe as the spelling in this essay: “… the ethnonym Chokwe is spelled in many ways. The same is true for the spelling of the name of their language, which, in Katanga, is called Chichokwe. Following the African phonetic alphabet, the ethnonym should be spelled Cokwe, and the people refer to themselves as Tucokwe (sing. Kacokwe). In this article the common Anglicized spelling Chokwe is retained. However, in accordance with the African phonetic alphabet, the sound ‘ch’ is transcribed as ‘c’ in italicized vernacular terms” (3). Though the named style of this mask corresponds with the Chokwe ethnolinguistic group, multiple regional groups participate in the mukanda initiation rite and create and use Pwo and Mwana Pwo masks in related public ceremonies, including the Luvale, Lunda, Luchazi, Mbunda, and Ovimbundu peoples.⁶6See Jordán, 67, Silva, 14. Moreover, without more precise provenance information or documentation to suggest the identity of the artist, the Chokwe style identification does not necessarily indicate that a Chokwe artist created the mask.⁷7Jordán has noted that many objects categorized as Chokwe show stylistic influences of neighboring people groups that make artistic attribution to one specific ethnic group difficult. Attempting a precise ethno-stylistic attribution for Mask goes beyond the limitations of this essay, because in the words of Jordán, “specific group attributions are often possible, but without concrete field documentation such an exercise would remain highly speculative” (22). For general critiques of the notion of ethnically contingent style categories in the traditional or classical arts of Africa, see Sidney Kasfir, “One Tribe/One Style? Paradigms in the Historiography of African Art” and Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of Art and Identity in West Africa. The art of sculpting in wood is reserved for specialized and highly esteemed male sculptors in Chokwe society and is typically a hereditary profession. During the height of Chokwe political and social prosperity in the nineteenth century, court art thrived surrounding centralized chiefdoms, and some named artists are recorded especially from this period and the early twentieth century.⁸8Bastin, La Sculpture Tshokwe, 62–63. Despite the social prestige of these artists, few named Chokwe artists are recorded in connection with specific sculptures in Western collections, as is the case for the High Museum’s Mask.

Chokwe and neighboring peoples recognize the presence of spirits, or mahamba (singular: hamba), which consist of ancestral spirits as well as spirits embodying natural forces and concepts. Mahamba regularly interact with living people and must be appeased and respected to keep illness and other misfortunes from befalling individuals and groups. Sculptures and masks carved to represent mahamba are imbued with their power.⁹9Petridis, 132. When a hamba is incarnated in a mask, it is known as a mukishi. Three primary varieties of mukishi feature in Chokwe culture, each type with its own aesthetic qualities and social function. Cikungu masks are used for special ceremonial occasions by the chief and kept hidden and secret when not in use. Mukishi a ku mukanda masks are used in mukanda and burned at the conclusion of this months-long initiation process into manhood. The final category of masks, mukishi a kahangana (dance masks), are performed in public social settings and consist of a variety of mask types with diverse roles and gendered characteristics.¹⁰10Bastin, “Ritual Masks of the Chokwe,” 40–42. The High Museum’s Mask is likely an example of the dance mask Pwo (fulfilled woman) or the closely related Mwana Pwo (potential woman), with the definition of “womanhood” closely aligned with “motherhood.”¹¹11Cameron, 77–83. Christiane Falgayrettes alternatively describes the distinction as “la femme” (the woman) and “la jeune femme” (the young woman), respectively (Angola: Figures de Pouvoir, 166).

Pwo masks serve as both the embodiment of the female ancestor and the pinnacle of Chokwe beauty ideals for women and are carved by specialized male sculptors and danced by male masqueraders.¹²12Falgayrettes, Art et Mythologie: Figures Tshokwe, 20. Multiple sources indicate that Chokwe sculptors invite a degree of portraiture and subjectivity into their creation of Pwo masks.¹³13Guyer, 305. In order to model the features of a particularly beautiful woman, the sculptor would seize any opportunity to observe her physical characteristics and personal adornment.¹⁴14Bastin, “Ritual Masks of the Chokwe,” 44. These observations, including measurements of the facial features, sometimes occurred through deceptive means to preserve the anonymity of the male masquerade dancer, who may look to his wife, girlfriend, or female relative as his model for ideal beauty.¹⁵15LaGamma, 214; Guyer, 205. The relationship between the mask and the dancer who owned it was close and secretive, with the owner paying a “symbolic bride-price” to the artist and often being buried with the mask along with the returned dowry.¹⁶16LaGamma, 214; Bastin, La Sculpture Tshokwe, 89; Bastin “Ritual Masks of the Chokwe,” 44.

In the Pwo masquerade performance, the male dancer wears a woven full-body costume, including imitation breasts (fig. 6).¹⁷17LaGamma, 214; Guyer, 305. The dance features elegant and graceful movements and hip swaying, emphasizing feminine fertility and proper social comportment.¹⁸18Jordán, “Engaging the Ancestors,” 68. The dance primarily occurs during the boys’ circumcision rites, or mukanda, in which boys are isolated from the town as they complete their transformation into manhood. The Pwo dance serves to entertain and honor mothers who are separated from their sons as well as to reaffirm and reinforce Chokwe gender roles.¹⁹19Cameron 1998, 82–83. The town’s women play an active role in this process by responding negatively to Pwo maskers who represent women poorly or inaccurately, while cheering for those maskers who represent women well and asking for them by their dance names at future public performances.²⁰20Jordán, “Engaging the Ancestors,” 68. At the conclusion of the mukanda rites, the Pwo masker joins the mukishi a kahangana representing the male ancestor figure, Chisaluke, in a dance to commemorate the complementary relationship between men and women in Chokwe society and to dispel gendered tensions brought on by the initiation process.²¹21Ibid., 69; Falgayrettes Art et Mythologie: Figures Tshokwe, 20.

Pwo masks, a dynamic art form associated with Chokwe identity rather than a static and extinct tradition, have changed in terms of their significance and usage in response to the forces of colonialism and modernity. Modern artists, writers, and museums in Angola have harnessed iconic symbols of Chokwe art such as Pwo masks for various ends, from expressions of resistance to Portuguese colonialism to attempts at the nationalistic reclamation of indigenous heritage.²²22Delinda Collier, Repainting the Walls of Lunda, 141–175. Pwo’s usage and relevance have expanded beyond the mukanda rites, with Pwo masquerades occurring at political rallies, NGO development workshops, and Christmas celebrations.²³23Boris Wastiau, Chokwe, 40. The emergence of a new mukishi a kahangana that sometimes appears alongside Pwo, a satirical and politically charged Chiwigi figure who represents a more urban and Westernized idea of femininity, indicates the continued relevance of the Pwo mask through the currents of modernity and globalization.²⁴24Jordán, “Engaging the Ancestors,” 69–70; Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, Persona: Masks of Africa, 122.

I hypothesize that the reddish color of the exterior surface of the Pwo mask may have been attained through the application of a mixture of red clay and oil and that this material and aesthetic choice powerfully invoke the initiation rites of Chokwe girls.²⁵25“Face Mask,” National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution Collections. https://www.si.edu/object/nmafa_85-15-20 (accessed 1/23/23); Bastin 1982, 67. The Chokwe feminine beauty ideal is not merely fertility but fertility that has been properly cultivated and commemorated through the social process of initiation, known as ukule.²⁶26Women who come to physical maturity outside of the initiation process are seen as “inert,” “unattractive,” and “infertile” by the Chokwe. The initiation process therefore not only validates the newfound fertility of girl initiates but also activates and shapes it. Cameron, 78–79; Bastin, La Sculpture Tshokwe, 50. At the conclusion of the rites, adult women from the community bathe the girl initiates in a mixture of red clay and oil to visually signify their transformation into fertile women upon their return to their parents.²⁷27Cameron, 78. The reddish exterior of the Pwo mask recalls this milestone in a Chokwe woman’s life, further emphasizing the close relationships between fertility, initiation, and ideal beauty in Chokwe culture. In order to confirm or reject this hypothesis, which carries exciting implications for the interplay between material and meaning in Pwo masks, I propose that the Atlanta Art Conservation Center (AACC) undertake pigment testing through methods such as XRF analysis of the wooden component of the Mask to determine the presence of applied pigments or oils.

The AACC reports that the Mask is in fair condition at the time of writing. The wooden components of the mask are in good condition with no visible evidence of deterioration, as is the crocheted textile component of the mask, which is free of fraying. The fibers that make up the coiffure, however, are “severely flattened and misaligned from improper storage,” according to the AACC.²⁸28Personal correspondence with AACC staff, January 30, 2023. This damage likely was caused by the gradual weight of the wooden components of the mask pressing down on the fibrous coiffure components, a result of storing the mask horizontally and facing up. This conservation need must be addressed through treatment to stabilize the object and prevent further degradation.

The AACC has proposed a five-step treatment plan for the Chokwe Mask. First, the object will be photographed before, during, and after treatment to create a visual record of the conservation process. Second, the surface of the mask will be cleaned with a soft brush and museum vacuum to remove a layer of dust. Third, the mask’s coiffure will be humidified to safely realign the hair to its proper orientation. Fourth, a mount will be built for display and storage to mitigate further damaging compression of the mask in the future.²⁹29The mount could be constructed to result in the wooden component of the mask bearing weight, allowing for the woven and fibrous components of the mask to fall naturally without any heavier materials compressing them. For an example of a similar conservation project of a Chokwe Pwo mask, see Amaris Sturm, “Beauty Treatment: Conserving the Pwo Mask.” Finally, a technical report will be composed to describe and document the treatment.³⁰30Personal correspondence with AACC staff, January 30, 2023. This process will stabilize the mask, correct damage resulting from extended flat storage, and prepare it for display in the High Museum’s galleries.