New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and CollaborationsAugust 15, 2026 through January 3, 2027
Masquerade has long stood as the iconic African performance genre, and yet the artists who create masquerades are often unacknowledged and under-represented in exhibitions and publications. New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations showcases the artworks and voices of individual creators and offers a fresh take on the vitality of masquerade arts. New African Masquerades makes clear that creativity in African masking is fundamentally contemporary, highly collaborative in nature, and innately connected to global markets. The exhibition challenges both the widely held ideas of the “anonymous African artist” and assumptions that masquerade is an unchanging, static art form solely rooted in the distant past.
New African Masquerades shares the stories of four masquerade artists: Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa (Nigeria), David Sanou (Burkina Faso), Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah (Sierra Leone), and Hervé Youmbi (Cameroon), exploring their motivations, their artistic choices, the patronage and economic networks with which they engage, and how the artists adapt their respective genres in response to current circumstances and changing trends, locally and globally. This exhibition is rooted in humanist ideas, driven by ethical considerations in working with living artists from previously colonized spaces, and is a focused effort to foster meaningful engagements with public audiences and communities on both sides of the Atlantic.
Hervé Youmbi. Tso Scream Mask, Visages de masques (IX) series, 2015–23. Wood, pigment, fiber, beads, textile, glue, velvet and cotton fabric, silk embroidery, and horsehair. Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, museum purchase, Robert P. Gordy Fund, 2023.38.1- .7. Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo: Hervé Youmbi
A Kimi mask (headpiece carved by David Sanou in the studio of André Sanou) dancing in Nasso, Burkina Faso (detail), April 22, 2015. Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo: Lisa Homann
Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa. Afia Awan Masquerade Ensemble, 2022. Polyester fabric, racia, leather; life-size. Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, museum purchase, Françoise Billion Richardson Fund, 2022.85.a-.h. Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo: Sesthasak Boonchai
New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art, in partnership with Musée des Civilisations noires in Dakar, Senegal, and received generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
FUNDED IN PART BY THE CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG AND THE MARGARET ACHESON STUART SOCIETY
MEDIA PARTNER: WUSF: YOUR HOME FOR NPR / WSMR CLASSICAL
Featured Images:
Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah with Dezo Sesay, tailor. Jollay Society “Fairy” Masquerade Ensemble, 2023. Commissioned for Fitchburg Art Museum. Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo: Sesthasak Boonchai
Hervé Youmbi. Tso Scream Mask, Visages de masques (IX) series (detail), 2015–23. Wood, pigment, fiber, beads, textile, glue, velvet and cotton fabric, silk embroidery, and horsehair. Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, museum purchase, Robert P. Gordy Fund, 2023.38.1- .7. Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo: Hervé Youmbi
David Sanou (headpiece carved in the studio of André Sanou); the maker of the body requests anonymity. Kimi Masquerade Ensemble in Honor of André Sanou’s “Qui Dit Mieux?”, 2022. Wood, fibers, glue, synthetic dyes, and paints; dimensions variable. Commissioned for Fitchburg Art Museum in 2022. Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo: Sesthasak Boonchai
