African Masks and Emotions: In Theory and in Practice (Getty Research Institute Council Lecture)

In this groundbreaking book, Z. S. Strother, inspired by dialogues with African masquerade patrons and performers, disputes assumptions that masks universally hide, reveal, or transform.

In Western European languages, the word mask exerts a powerful presence as a figure of speech. To masquerade is to pretend to be someone or something one is not. By extension, unmasking is a heroic metaphor for exposing a hidden truth. In this volume, art historian Z. S. Strother counters that narrative, using African case studies to offer an alternative vision of masquerading. She explores the aesthetic emotions aroused by masks, or more precisely, by “dances of masks”: joy, wonder, awe, fear, and the release of laughing out loud. She also investigates the uncanny―a sensation of “delicious shiveriness” triggered when familiar spaces and individuals become strange and changeable. Inspired by Strother’s studies in DR Congo, African Masks and Emotions takes a comparative perspective and moves emotion from the periphery to the center of analysis.

Reflecting Getty's commitment to open content, African Masks and Emotions is available for free download in ePub and PDF formats at: https://www.getty.edu/publications-reports/item/2F27A4. This paperback edition is available for sale for readers who wish to have a bound reference copy.

Z. S. Strother is the Riggio Professor of African Art at Columbia University in the City of New York.