Ibibio Ekpo Wood Mask

A large face mask with coffee-bean eyes, a bulbous nose, a toothy grin, rectangular ears, a heavy jaw and a broad lobed coiffure. The head is crowned by a slender band carrying an abstract anthropomorphic face at its centre, and the whole surface carries a dark brown pigment and glossy patina. The Ibibio live in small village groups and regulate social order through masks and figures representing good and evil spirits; a fierce face of this kind stands for an evil or immoral person who became an apparition after death.