MULTI COLOR CONGOLESE MASK

MULTI COLOR CONGOLESE MASK

This expressive African mask comes from the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In these heavily wooded regions coexist many scattered ethnic groups grouped into villages. The ethnic sub-groups although having local chiefs, like the Lega, be endowed with a central authority which, by the way, resisted the attempts of Christianization of the Belgian colonists in the first half of the XXth century.

The mask presented here intervened within the framework of initiations such as circumcision and the promotion of an individual to a higher social rank.