Contemporary West African Masquerade Comes To New Orleans

Forbes

18-05-2025

A pair of 'Kimi' masks (headpiece carved by David Sanou in the studio of André Sanou) performing greetings with the lead griot Tchiedo playing his drum behind them, Bindougosso district, Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, May 3, 2022.
It's fitting an American-based exhibition of contemporary West African masquerade would open in New Orleans. New Orleans with its own colorful history of masks, masquerade, costuming, public dance, music, ceremony, and celebration.
Many of these New Orleans traditions find their origin in West Africa, legacies of the transatlantic slave trade. Hundreds of thousands of West Africans–and their culture–were kidnapped and trafficked to New Orleans for forced labor. New Orleans had the largest market for enslaved people in the Deep South.
The presentation of West African masquerade now on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art isn't focused on the 17th or 18th centuries, however, it's focused on the 21st century.
'It's probably the most vibrant and widespread artistic and creative practice on the continent,' Amanda M. Maples, Françoise Billion Richardson Curator of African Art at NOMA, told Forbes.com. 'Masquerade is very much a day-to-day experience in a lot of West Africa, and also into Central Africa.'
'New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations' offers a close look at contemporary West African masquerade focusing on four living artists working in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.
'Part of the problems that we're trying to correct is this misconception about African masquerades that sets it in this timeless, distant past that's unknowable,' Maples said.
The first presentation of its kind, 'New African Masquerades' offers a rare look into contemporary West African masquerade by contextualizing the works of individual artists within a range of social, economic, and religious practices. Those individual artists are Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa (b. 1973; Creek Town, Nigeria), Sheku 'Goldenfinger' Fofanah (b. 1976; Freetown, Sierra Leone), David Sanou (b. 1969; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso), and Hervé Youmbi (b. 1973; Bangui, Central African Republic).
The exhibition has been organized in partnership with the Musée des Civilisations noires in Dakar, Senegal, and will be presented in a parallel form for African audiences—the first time an exhibition will be shared in such a way across North America and Africa.
Exhibition curators, including Maples, have all been working and studying contemporary masquerade in the region for a decade or more. Presenting artists were selected based on the curators' networks of societies and artists on the ground in the region. The masquerade on view is the best of the best, produced by individuals whose artwork is the most highly sought out locally and internationally.
Despite masquerade's widespread practice in West Africa, exhibition curators felt it was important to highlight individual artists as opposed to presenting a 'survey.'
'(We want to) overturn that homogenization of African cultural expressions,' Maples explained. 'If you don't focus on an individual artist or a specific city or geography, then you lose those nuances and lose those creative productions and personal stories.'
West African masquerade is an artform, therefore, it has artists. Individuals. The exhibition strives to reinforce that. These artists are individuals. Distinct. As with any other human endeavor, some are better than others. None are the same.
'Masquerade doesn't remain stable,' Maples said. 'It doesn't remain normative. Even if the genres are recognizable and have been around for centuries, there's always some kind of artistic innovation, creative ingenuity, artistic expression, individuality.'
A reminder to American audiences about the complexity and diversity of Africa and Africans. Africa is a continent with 54 countries, 1.5 billion people, and hundreds of cultures and languages spread out over a landmass that would swallow all of North America with room to spare. Flat world maps shrunk Africa's size in relation to North America, a bias that has misinformed the perception of nearly every American as to Africa's scale and significance.
Hervé Youmbi, 'Tso Scream Mask' and 'Tso Scream Leopard Mask' at the Nka'a Kossié society succession ceremony at Fondati Chieftaincy, Saturday, December 3, 2022.
The term 'masquerade' has multiple meanings across different cultures and communities and is loosely defined as a broad set of practices wherein individuals and societies dance in full-body, multimedia ensembles. These ensembles are made from materials including wood, cloth and fabrics, sequins, feathers, gourds, raffia, and cowry shells. They are then activated in numerous ways, including in performances, processions, and other ceremonies by either the masquerade artist or another practitioner.
For the North American presentation, 'New African Masquerades' includes 13 full, head-to-toe masquerade ensembles.
In addition to ensembles, the exhibition includes photography, recorded interviews, and an immersive video experience showing never-before-seen 360-degree footage, views of the ensembles being performed, looks into the artists' studios, and clips sharing the perspectives of the artists.
These additional components underscore the importance of music, movement, libations, skillful presentation, and audience participation to masquerade more broadly. Contrary to many static museum presentations, masquerade is almost always defined by movement, theatricality, and audience participation.
Created with the support and participation of the artists, masquerade societies, and their communities, the videos offer visitors an extremely rare opportunity of seeing masquerades that would normally not be accessible to the public.
'The (ensembles) from Burkina Faso. That's the first time any of those masquerades have ever been seen outside of Burkina Faso,' Maples explained. 'Those are highly protected and the body makers chose to remain anonymous. They did not want their names tied to the raffia bodies, but they did ask the ancestors three times, and all were in agreement in that area of Bobo-Dioulasso that these can be seen, and they wanted to have them seen and shared with an American public.'
Different ensembles serve different purposes within different societies. Some are simply entertainment. Others are deeply sacred. This can be compared to Native American dance ceremonies. Which West African masquerades and Native American dances are meant to be observed by outsiders? Depends on the specific masquerade or dance.
'I work in Sierra Leone, so Jollay and Ordehlay, those are entertainment, very low on the secrecy spectrum. They're easy for Americans to access. You need permits to get them out of the country, but there are no secret guidelines or rules that we needed to navigate,' Maples said. 'In the Nigeria section by Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa, the Ekpe Society, highly secretive, highly regimented and regulated. That is a highly sacred mask never seen outside of Nigeria. We had to display the letter giving us permission to show it and to show the video. A rare opportunity to ever see these masquerades, especially with the support of the community that created them.'
Sheku 'Goldenfinger' Fofanah parading with his Mami Wata devil during the Massaboni Ordehlay procession, Lunsar, Sierra Leone, December 26, 2022.
In addition to being a featured artist, Youmbi—whose work directly addresses the ethical questions inherent in presenting masquerades internationally—served as a core member of the exhibition planning and curatorial team.
'There's been this idea that all African art has been collected in an unethical way,' Maples said. 'That's not the case, but there is a very pressing and very important need and push to address restitutions and returns that goes hand-in-hand with the way that African art, and in particular masquerades, have been packaged and displayed in western contexts, in particular museums.'
Youmbi provides two separate wall label texts adjacent to his masks.
'One side is a very art gallery, white cube type language and label. The one next to it is more ethnographic,' Maples explains. 'He shows you the language that is employed to homogenize, to package, to provide these assumptions that are long standing, especially in America and Europe, about African art. He's trying to show that those values, those systems, were not honored, collected, or respected (by Western institutions). That means the intangible, the sacred, the oral history, all the things that gave (masks) embodied, human meaning, it's all been tossed aside for the objectness of it, the nature of the object itself.'
'New African Masquerades' organizers worked in complete collaboration with the artworks' makers. Everything is authorized. Ethical. Reciprocal.
Installation view of 'New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations' at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Early in the Trump administration, unelected shadow president Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency announced massive funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Taking his war on cultural even further, Trump's proposed 2026 budget targets the NEA and NEH for complete elimination.
Both agencies provide essential funding to countless cultural organizations nationwide.
'(The exhibition) absolutely would not have been possible without the NEH. Would not have been possible without that funding,' Maples said. 'Museums can't afford that kind of collaboration and travel.'
'New African Masquerades' received generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the form of an initial planning grant and a major implementation grant—which funded the research, production, and interpretative materials for the presentation. A further grant was recently awarded from the National Endowment for the Arts to support NOMA's display of 'New African Masquerades.'
As part of the NEH implementation grant, NOMA hired Simeneh Gebremariam as Curatorial and Programs Assistant in January 2024 to support the development and presentation of the exhibition. Having worked in museums in North America and Africa, Gebremariam holds an MA in sociocultural anthropology and a graduate certificate in African studies from the University of Michigan.
Government funding also allowed for travel to and from Africa by curators and artists, and the careful transport of exhibition materials from Africa.
'NEH paid for publication (of the exhibition catalogue), which is also very expensive, and one of the key ways we can disseminate (the artists') words and their art with the world, including Africa,' Maples explained. 'We're very focused on getting those books distributed around Africa.'
'New African Masquerades' can be seen at the New Orleans Museum of Art through August 10, 2025. It then travels to the Frist Art Museum in Nashville from October 10, 2025, through January 4, 2026, the San Antonio Museum of Art from February 27 through July 5, 2026, the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg in September of 2026 through January of 2027, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. February 19 through September 26, 2027. Hopefully.
In addition to these North American venues, 'New African Masquerades' is planned to travel to African museums beginning next year starting with Musée des Civilisations noires, Dakar, Senegal from February to January, the Sierra Leone National Museum in Freetown in the fall, and the National Museum in Calabar, Nigeria in 2027.
Because more of a good thing is always better in New Orleans, anyone interested in African masquerade should make a point of visiting the New Orleans African American Museum beginning on June 19th, 2025–Juneteenth–when a new permanent installation opens honoring the city's Black Masking Indians.