Solution To Bus Crowded Problem

masks in Burkina Faso and Sindou

















I photographed these zoomorphic masks at the National Museum of Ouagadougou, in addition to masks, this antique fabrics and musical instruments. The different objects are not all stored in one place, for lack of space in buildings dedicated to these arts, although the museum is a fairly recent construction.
anthropomorphic masks
They represent men or women. They embody the elders, priests, hunters and warlocks. There are masks female figure next to masks male figure.


Masks anthropozoomorphes :
They combine animal traits and human traits, but with the preponderance of the human face. The man's face is then assigned a usually ornamental device consisting of elements borrowed from the animal (horns, feathers, teeth).













Mask "denies as much as he says" according to formulation Claude Levi-Strauss. Although endowed with a secret, silent, in fact, that only the initiated should know. Its power is also its ability to embody a spirit, a bond between humans and ancestors, the visible and the invisible. The mask is associated with myths and rituals, social and economic functions, in most traditional societies. The masks are used in initiation ceremonies or funeral or on the occasion of festivities.


The funeral mask retains its mystery ...

funerary mask in. ..








Sindou I attended a funeral for a former village chief,
preparations meet the women of the family of the deceased and the neighboring village, the excitement is great and masks out ... The children are afraid, they flee back then, frightened and attracted by these elusive forms dancing and jumping around the place ... These dances follow a traditional dance which is related with what the mask symbolizes. Being associated with death and the exclusive world of men, the masks are supposed to have also the power terrify women. During the ceremony which I see only one party, the other part being hidden from the uninitiated, animals, provided by the villagers who requested the ceremony, are slaughtered and cut on site.

























I use this page on masks to tell you about an exhibition of the Musée du Quai Branly, entitled "Factory of the image.
link: http://www.quaibranly.fr/fr/programmation/expositions/al-affiche.html of Tuesday, February 16, 2010 to Sunday, July 17, 2011
With 160 works and objects from 5 continents, it invites a decryption of great artistic and material humanity to reveal what can not be seen immediately in an image.

This image understanding is based on four main models iconological created by mankind, beyond any geographical or chronological classification, whether Africa, in Europe of the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries, the Americas, the Amazonian Indians and Inuit of Alaska and into the Australian Aborigines. The exhibition reveals these 4 models - 4 large reflecting worldviews - that is totemism, naturalism, animism and analogy.
With Factory images, visitors can discover the different principles by which decryption civilizations see the world and report.