Lipico Yelmo Mask

Mask and helmet Lipico, with very realistic human face and real hair inserted into the wood. They are used in dances Midimu and Mappico, in ceremonies that celebrate the end of the initiation of adolescents, in which also participate the masks of the belly that symbolize fertility.

Initiation rites play a very important role in society Makondé. Men participate in mapic dance with their lipic masks to which they attribute a sacred character. During the initiation of the girls some older women secretly wear lipic masks, carved by initiated men. Women responsible for female initiation may sometimes have access to some secrets of male initiation. The mapic dance through the mapic mask is, according to Portuguese anthropologists Jorge and Margot Dias, “the most prominent figure of Makondé culture, living symbol of a human spirit, male or female, used by men to dominate, through fear, women and young people not yet initiated in the rites of puberty”.

Also the Midumu dance is a night ceremony that culminates three years of initiation of boys and girls and always ends with a happy ending and a feast.

This mask accuses the use and passage of time. Brown patina.