{"id":3884,"date":"2016-02-17T15:54:19","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T15:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/?p=3884"},"modified":"2016-02-17T15:54:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T15:54:19","slug":"the-songye-kifwebe-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/the-songye-kifwebe-mask\/","title":{"rendered":"The Songye Kifwebe mask"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dev.masksoftheworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916a.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3885\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3885\" src=\"https:\/\/dev.masksoftheworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916a-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"aaaMystrySolvd-916a\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916a-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916a-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916a-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916a-1024x1024.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Q:\u00a0 I bought this male Songye Kifwebe mask a month ago from a seller in Brussels. It is a huge mask of this type. At least the biggest I&#8217;ve ever seen: 77cmX31cmX51cm, W: 3,4kg. Are this big masks used in rituals, festivals? How old do you think it is? Thanks.\u00a0 Ricardo, 916<\/p>\n<p>A:\u00a0 The Sonye people come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Early accounts of their Kifwebe classified them as fetishes that function as caretakers.\u00a0 It is evident that the Kifwebe is a powerful social instrument probably associated with healing and rituals of mystical and transformational control. This highly abstracted design resembles nothing one would see in the real world. The submitted photo doesn&#8217;t show the exciting design very well so I&#8217;m including a second picture from our book, <em>Masks of the World<\/em>. It is highly unlikely that the piece is old and used, but you might want to visit someone who is a expert on African traditional art.<a href=\"https:\/\/dev.masksoftheworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916b.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3886\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3886\" src=\"https:\/\/dev.masksoftheworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916b-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"aaaMystrySolvd-916b\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916b-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916b-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916b-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/aaaMystrySolvd-916b-1024x1024.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Q:\u00a0 I bought this male Songye Kifwebe mask a month ago from a seller in Brussels. It is a huge mask of this type. At least the biggest I&#8217;ve ever seen: 77cmX31cmX51cm, W: 3,4kg. Are this big masks used in rituals, festivals? How old do you think it is? Thanks.\u00a0 Ricardo, 916 A:\u00a0 The Sonye people come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Early accounts of their Kifwebe classified them as fetishes that function as caretakers.\u00a0 It is evident that the Kifwebe is a powerful social instrument probably associated with healing and rituals of mystical and transformational control. This highly abstracted design resembles nothing one would see in the real world. The submitted photo doesn&#8217;t show the exciting design very well so I&#8217;m including a second picture from our book, Masks of the World. It is highly unlikely that the piece is old and used, but you might want to visit someone who is a expert on African traditional art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3887,"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3884\/revisions\/3887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masksoftheworld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}