Okuyi Mask

This beautiful Punu mask from Gabon is called ‘Okuyi’ or ‘Mukudji. It was worn during acrobatic dances by men on stilts. The face is very well made, delicate, and full of serenity with its white coating and closed eyes set on swollen eyelids. The dark coating is made from crushed seeds mixed with palm oil. These masks may have served as training masks for novice dancers. They may also have been old white masks repainted black on the occasion of collective misfortune such as an epidemic, crime, or witchcraft. They may also have had a judicial function and helped uncover witches.

Black masks are rarer than the white ones among collections, perhaps due to their malevolent nature, which may have made villagers hesitant to show them to Europeans. This mask is here remarkably translated by the sensibility of expression and patterns. The finesse of the lines—delicately hemmed lips giving a discreet movement, shaded arch of the shaded eyebrows, subtle hollow of the orbits determining the marked cheekbones—answers the narrowed palpebral cleft of the eyes in almost closed “coffee beans," suggesting a “vision interior," The rare – median-pointed headband highlights the frontal curve, and the large-scale motifs (4, 9, or 12) allude to the number of primordial 9 clans among the Punu-Bayaca. The number 9 relates to the nine original clans and the nine migration routes. The distribution of the scales in a diamond shape signifies femininity, while a square form signifies masculinity. Given that many masks have a diamond shaped motif on the forehead and two square motifs on the temples, this may signify that these masks are in fact androgynous.

According to the tradition of the Punu masks of South Gabon, with the face whitewashed with kaolin (pembe ), the entity represented celebrates, through an idealized image, the beauty of women and their importance in social organization and the world of spirits. Objects that exalted the beauty and importance of women for the Punu, these masks were also among the first African objects to receive recognition from modern artists. The headdress made of large curved braid is more realistic than the headdress with nuts, which is classic padded. Okuyi mask, an incarnation of an ancestor, occurs especially during mourning ceremonies. The term Punu can as easily signify ‘valiant warrior’ as ‘bandit of the great deadly path." There was a dissident faction, the Bjag or Bayaca, meaning ‘warrior’, ‘wild’, ‘killer’ that battled against the Kingdom of Kongo (Christianized in 1491) and against the Portuguese that intervened following the taking of the Kongo capital San Salvador in 1569 by the Bayaca.

The Punu, or Bapunu (Bapounou), are a Bantu group of Central Africa and one of the four major peoples of Gabon, inhabiting interior mountain and grassland areas in the southwest of the country, around the upper N’Gounié and Nyanga Rivers. Bapunu also live in the Divenie, Kibangou, and Mossendjo districts of the Republic of the Congo. They are linguistically related to the Eshira. Punu traditions record a migration from the south sometime before the 19th century as a result of wars somewhere between the Congo and Niari Rivers. In the 19th century, they gathered rubber, and participated in the slave trade, sending both their own and acquisitions from further inland to Loango and Fernan Vaz. In the present day, the Punu are noted for their cloth made of palm fiber and for their iron weaponry.