Cleveland Museum of Art

Helmet Mask

Date

early to mid-1900s

Medium

wood

Culture

Western Sudan, Ivory Coast, Senufo, 20th century

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The iconography of this helmet mask is comprised of sculpted renderings of different animal attributes including a ram's horns, a warthog's tusks, a crocodile's mouth, and a hyena's snout. Carved between the long antelope horns is a miniature chameleon that holds an abstract wing-shaped motif called mangele. Intended to impress and terrify, the sculpture's fearsome aesthetic alludes to the mask's power as an anti-sorcery device.

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