Kanaga mask
"Kanaga" mask
which among other things means "God's
hand" is carried by the Dogon dancers..
With a circular movement of head and chest, they
repeat the gestures of god when he created space.
As every other mask of Africa, the kanaga mask is
also present in the ceremonies in order to reap the
scattered energies.
As
André Malraux wrote : "African
mask is not a fixed human expression, it's an appearance...
In it, the sculptor doesn't turn a ghost whom he
knows nothing about into geometry, he arouses this
one by its geometry, his mask acts less insofar as
it looks like a man than insofar as it doesn't look
like; the animal masks are not animals: the antelope
mask is not an antelope, but the spirit-Antelope,
and it's its style which make it spirit."
