Masque à transformation Kwakwaka'wakw 2001

Overview

In Kwakwaka’wakw society in British Columbia, masks form part of the symbolic heritage of nobles and chiefs. The mask shown here, a late 19th-century transformation mask carved from cedar and taken from the Musée de l’Homme, expresses duality: closed, it is a crow; open, a human face with a hooked nose. These ancestral objects, manifestations of spirits, accompany myths, dances, and costumes, appearing in ceremonies and potlatches, gatherings where privileges are transmitted. Long suppressed, Am