Discursive notes in front of African masks.

Résumé

We discuss some current ideas and concepts concerning African masks in catalogues and exhibitions. Outside of their context of origin and incorporated in the universe of collections, what do the “antelope masks”, “masks which represent a mythical being” mean? How could we explain, in a few words, the meaning of “ancestor mask”? Reflecting upon that under an aesthetic-anthropological perspective, as well as from the perspective of one who is seeing them for the first time, we present twenty wooden African masks, most of them unpublished, now at the Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Universidade de São Paulo asset.