[Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch] This Lwena mask is an elegant, abstracted vision of a beautiful female face. You might at first notice the echoing of the ovals that form the eyes and the mouth, the slightly raised chin and slightly raised forehead that create a sense of the roundness of the face within the mask itself. This mask was danced in Angola in 1920. We happen to have a postcard showing it in action, and even then, these facial markings were a little bit old fashioned. A mask like this one is meant to represent the mother of initiates who are reaching adulthood. This is a process of training that happens outside of the village where older men help young boys understand the responsibilities of adulthood. This mask would've come out to remind the women of the village that their sons were about to be finished with the initiation, or to visit neighboring villages to invite them to the final celebration when the boys came back to the community as men. The costume for this mask is a tight woven fiber, and you can see a bit of that on the neck, so try to imagine that covering the entire body of the dancer. Like most African masks, this was danced by a young man, but the tight fitting costume had a suggestion of breasts, and often the masquerader would borrow one of the boys' mother's wrappers to put around his waist, sort of invoking women past and present.

[Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch] If you look at this mask closely, you'll see that there is perfect symmetry to the facial markings. When you look at the perfectly plaited hair, you can see how neatly that was added to the top of the mask. And then we have small strands of beads that aren't symmetrical and that aren't neatly applied. These might've been added to the mask after it left Angola by a dealer or trader who wanted to convince an American buyer that this was really African. Especially in the early part of the 20th century, African art was seen as primitive or somehow not interested in symmetry and order. And so it's possible that someone added these beads to make the masks meet the expectations of buyers. Now that these beads have been added, we will keep them as part of the history of the object.