Karanga mask

It is one of the most well-known masks of the Yatenga group and are part of those known as Iron masks. She mediates between the world of the living and the dead and evokes the human and divine dimension. He accompanies the deceased in their walk to their last abode. It is venerated in family altars.

It represents an antelope head in which two raised and stylized flat horns are raised, with the front face in concave form. The union with the land that always embodies the antelope makes this mask a protector of plants and sowed ones, reasons why it appears interchangeably in funeral ceremonies and in agricultural rites. The masks Karansé (karanga plural) are daughters of the earth, and originally were only covered by the lords of the earth, that is, by those who were in the care of the earth, for in traditional Africa no one owned the earth, but only God, and man a mere administrator and caretaker.

Its wearer, dressed in wide cloths and leaves, holds it simply by biting a small stick that serves as a crossbar uniting the walls of the mask. Both its shape and its polychrome can be very varied.

It is very difficult to define precisely certain styles of an area where interaction between ethnic groups is very pronounced. A mask attributed to the Mossi may in certain cases belong to their relatives Bobo or have been made by some sculptor of the country Kurumba.