Grebo mask

Grebo Seer Mask (Grand Kru County, Liberia)

Many have desired, for centuries, to possess the soul and territory of the Grebo people: from those first Mandinka who arrived from the north fleeing Almohad pressure (the Grebo never wanted to be part of their Poro societies), through those who, more Later, they tried to Islamize them (the Grebo never accepted to be circumcised), or the arrival of American freedmen with their airs of grandeur (they always considered them black-white), until reaching the two civil wars that devastated Liberia at the end of the 20th century and that they were forced to cross the Cavalla River to take refuge in the Ivory Coast, everything seemed aimed at them, in one way or another, losing the memory and lands of their ancestors.
Those masks with four, eight or more tubular eyes used with the intention of seeing the future seem to have been of little use to the Grebos. Still, the strange beauty of those scrutinizing faces leaves no one indifferent.
The Grebo mask that we have at Black Market presents a face framed in raffia fiber on which there are a pair of small horns, nine tubular eyes, a well-defined nose and an articulated jaw.

Height: 44.0 cm; Width: 18.0cm; Weight: 1.35 Kg