Mask - Vuvi - Gabon (No reserve price)

Decorative Vouvi mask from Gabon. Tsogho people.

The Tsogho country, though geographically preserved in its inhospitable mountains, sits at the crossroads of distinctly differentiated stylistic currents.

The Tsogho culture thus stands at the convergence point of influences and beliefs that it seems to have sought to synthesize through religious and mystical vocation.

Used during the nocturnal ceremonies of the Bwété initiatory society, these masks are ritual objects, kept out of sight of non-initiates.
They operate as manifestations of supernatural appearances, materializing the multitude of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic entities that the esoteric teaching dispensed by the confraternity uses as symbols.
The mask therefore serves to visualize the colorful and proliferating pantheon of symbolic images that the initiatory narratives evoke.

For the Mitsogho and within the Bwété society, the mask has a dual function.
A sacred object reserved for the only initiates at night, the same mask appears by day for all to see, thus taking on an ambiguous role:
in which case it still arouses fear but also becomes a pretext for a game.

We can also observe during the daytime rejoicings following the Bwété ceremonies genuine staged scenes in which unmasked characters appear, but dressed in disguise or clad in grotesque trappings, a kind of jesters enacting anecdotal characters, during bawdy or satirical scenes where the history of the tribe and its entanglements with neighboring tribes are evoked.