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A Hairy Find

Indigenous people all over the world have a special place in their religious beliefs for animals. Both the animals they hunted for food and the predators in their environment, with which they held a special connection since they too were hunters. This is most ideally portrayed in the exhibit vaguely identified as the “Face Mask with Articulated Jaw,” at the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts -- Lee Malone Gallery.
This eerie mask consists of a hollowed out wood and metal dreary face and is framed by three long feet of auburn colored hair, this captures both a certain sense of fear and reverence for nature and mask. This headdress was once a part of a dramatic and elaborate costume worn by a masquerader, who depicted an aggressive nature spirit sent by the ancestors of the family. These masqueraders, mainly of patrilineage decent, planned masquerades, cared for the masks, and successfully maintained the secrets of the masks to their graves, until recently.
These masqueraders carried out animistic ceremonies which included dance, offerings of food, and reveals of unfinished legacies through collaboration between masquerader and relative. In these ceremonies, the entire tribe, except masquerader(s), was seated around a large bond fire centered in the middle of the village. Then the masquerader(s) would emerge from the bushes with a mask, much like this ones intimidating and elongated locks of Orangutan hair and roughly carved wooden face. Then the local villagers would lay large bowls of fruit and vegetable out to their “ancestral spirits.” The masqueraders would kneel down facing the bowls of fruit and vegetable, enveloping them with their thick locks of rubescent hair, to “devour the food” Which would explain not only the physical, but the theatrical importance of the hair. Finally, the masquerader would physically collaborate with each tribes person to reveal any unfinished legacy or duty left by his or her ancestry. However, the exact tribe or...