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TRIBAL AFRICAN ART
MENDE (MENDI)
Sierra Leone and Liberia
The
2,000,000 Mende comprise numerous kinds of social structure, such as firmly marked kin
groups, political hierarchies and societies for diverse purposes: training boys and girls
in appropriate behavior, protection against enemies or curing illnesses. The Mende are
farmers who grow rice, yams, peanuts, and cocoa and who collect palm oil. They practice
crop rotation to avoid exhausting the soil. Most bodily ills are believed to result from
transgressions against the rules of conduct laid down by one sodality to another. The
Mende are best known for smooth, black, helmet-shaped masks, named sowei, used by
the sande society, in particular, during the initiating
girls. The initiates learn wisdom, beauty, grace, and self-control, all of which they will
need within the multigenerational, polygamous households of their future husbands. All
Mende girls join the sande society at puberty. Representing female water spirits,
the masks have an idealized female face whose aesthetic reflects religious and
philosophical ideals. The design of the facial features conforms to strict conventions and
has symbolic content. These masks are characterized by the shiny skin, the rings at the
neck and the elaborate hair styling that suggest good health and a well-to-do social
condition. The characteristic rings at the base of the masks can be explained as the
concentric ripples created as the spirit emerges from the water. On the other hand, they
are also believed to represent folds of fat, considered a sign of beauty, fertility,
vitality, and health. The coiffures, on the other hand, display a great range of
variations, which reflect changing fashions and thus may facilitate the dating and
localization of the masks. These helmets were carved from the full trunk of a large tree. Sowei
appears in public during the time when young girls are initiated into adulthood. It
may also emerge at the crowning of or during the funeral ceremonies of a paramount chief.
The masks are carved by men, but danced by women. This is unusual in Africa, since men
usually wear masks that conceal the face. They were worn over the head with the rim
resting on the shoulders. There are helmets with one, two, or four faces. Because the mask
is "found" beside a stream deep in the forest, where the sande
spirit is said to live, and is supposed not to be an artifact at all, the carver in this
case is anonymous. The dancer takes care that her costume contain no opening other than a
narrow slit for the eyes, not to come into contact with the spirit, which she imagines as
possessing a fearful, all-consuming power.
Members of
the corresponding male society, poro, also wear masks,
although they are of differing form. The women's yasse, a
divination and healing society, employs slender human figures called minsere. Large
ugly gongoli masks are used entirely for entertainment. Fecundity fetishes are also
known.
For generations, farmers in Sierra Leone
and adjoining portions of Guinea and Liberia have unearthed small figures carved of
soapstone and other types of rock. The imagery and the style of these sculptures are quite
varied, especially among those found in the lands now inhabited by the Kissi and Kono
people. In lands now owned by the Mende people, farmers place excavated stone figures or
freestanding heads in their rice fields or palm groves. Regarded as the representatives of
previous owners of the land, the objects are given offerings and asked to bring abundant
harvests. The Mende call these stone images nomoli (plural: nomolosia) --
“found spirit.”
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