Wooden helmet mask

Mende people, Sierra Leone
Early 20th century AD

Masks such as this are often known as bundu masks, named after the enclosure where girls are kept during initiation into the Sande society that regulates female behaviour and interests. This is one of the few masking traditions in Africa where women actually wear masks, an activity otherwise limited to males. Even here, masks are still made by male smiths.

The iconography of such works usually includes a number of elements representing an ideal of female beauty, with glossy skin, small facial features, decorative hairstyle and folds of fat at the neck.