Gabon (No reserve price)

Vuvi masks from Gabon
Public appearances of Gabonese Vuvi masks are astonishing spectacles that evoke a world beyond, parallel, but not entirely identical to that of the living. The links between departed ancestors and their descendants form the backdrop of what unfolds in a mode of didactics and entertainment.

One can take as an example the mukuyi of the peoples of the Ogooué basin (Gabon), which gathers members of the same clan during the initiation of boys, the birth of twins, or on the occasion of festivities marking the end of a mourning period. Identified as “female figures of the spirits of the dead,” the white masks of this region are of great stylistic diversity, ranging from the pared-down forms of the Vuvi to the naturalistic conception of the Punu, the latter remaining the best known.