Small and snappy, these elu masks were worn and danced by young Ogoni men during masquerades in the delta region, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
Part of a secret society, these young men donned masks and costumes performing mainly at funerals and annual agricultural ceremonies. Acknowledged originally as rituals, these masquerade ceremonies, from new perspectives, could be classified more as performance art today.
Elu (spirit) masks are small in scale, attached to a cloth hood covering the head. They are generally naturalistic in form, with the style varying according to artists and clans. The carving style is restrained, calm, bringing a harmony and balance to each piece. The masks depict smooth rounded surfaces, small symmetrical features and upturned noses celebrating youth, health and beauty. In spite of the scale of Elu masks, they often included features such as crisp hairlines, elaborate hairstyles and hats, features that impart personality to the character being represented.
The masks carved in the 1940s/50s depict asymmetrical hairstyles with partings fashionable in Africa at the time, providing a brief glimpse into popular culture and an interest in the secular. The portrayal of military caps and fez were evidence of shifting identities, the presence of colonialism and change.
However, the carving of composed facial features, contrasts the emphasis on the mouth, lips, and articulated jaws. Presumably this emphasis highlights the masks ability to “talk” conveying ideas.
When the jaws move during masquerades, the mouth opens, exposing splinter-like teeth made from wooden pegs or split pieces of cane. The length and form of these, appear visually threatening. On some masks, the form of the mouths are pulled to the artistic extreme, becoming almost beak-like.
Elu masks are generally painted black or white with black detail, (illustrating blocks of scarification at the temples and forehead). Whilst the form of the masks are typically Ogoni in style, the colour and scarification is indicative of fluid stylistic influences from their neighbours the Ibibio, Ibo and Ijo people.
Art lovers admired the Ogoni Elu masks as they are unique in Africa’s masking tradition. The combination of concise stylized expressions with wavy articulated jawlines and needle-like teeth is contradictory, inventive and visually arresting.
Masquerades in some other countries have masks that are mute, often relying on the accompanying drumming, whistles and music to create the requisite drama for the performance.
Other than with the Ogoni (and occasionally the Ibibio people), the technical feature of hinged jaws are more commonly associated with puppets in Africa’s marionette traditions where social commentary, critique and satire are an accepted norm.
It is hardly surprising then, that a society with entrenched cultural conventions pertaining to discourse, objects to injustice. Writer Ken Saro-Wiwa of the movement for the survival of Ogoni people ( MOSOP), campaigned unrelentingly against oil giants for the ecological devastation left in Ogoni land by Royal Dutch shell when between 1976-91, reportedly 2.1 million barrels of oil, flowed into Ogoni land turning the environment black.
The inconvenient “hinged jaws” of Saro-wiwa and 8 other campaigners were silenced at their execution in 1995. Royal Dutch shell still need to acknowledge responsibility for their inaction. The environment remains as they left it - an ecological disaster.
In contemporary time, masking traditions in Ogoni land continue, as seen below, these zoomorphic masks (karikpo) of the Ekpo society, are recorded and documented in new ways, in the photography of artist Zina Saro-wiwa, who believes that artists are powerful change makers.
"Brotherhood" from the Karikpo pipeline video, 2015.