{"id":35021,"date":"2026-11-03T08:23:52","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T07:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/?page_id=35021"},"modified":"2026-11-03T08:23:52","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T07:23:52","slug":"mende-masks-sowei-sande","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/mende-masks-sowei-sande\/","title":{"rendered":"Mende masks: Sowei, Sande and the catalogue record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MYL-10 and MYL-11 preserve different spellings of Sowei, Bundo and Bundu. The third selected record, MYL-6, is named Gonde. Bringing them together does not make them equivalent: the point is to examine distinctions retained in the historical catalogue.<\/p>\n<p>The text of MYL-11 mentions both Mende and Bassa. Those names remain part of the original document; an attribution has not been revised from a photograph. Each record\u2019s different views allow the objects to be compared before turning to their historical interpretations.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Documented context<\/h2>\n<p>The Met places masks named sowei or ndoli jowei within a region encompassing Mende and Sherbro communities in Sierra Leone and Bassa and Vai communities in Liberia. It links them to Sande and its members\u2019 performances. That context does not determine the origin of our objects.<\/p>\n<p class=\"small\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/art\/collection\/search\/824210\" rel=\"noopener\">The Metropolitan Museum of Art \u00b7 Ndoli jowei mask<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Reading the catalogue<\/h2>\n<p class=\"document-attribution\">Original historical document in Spanish<\/p>\n<blockquote lang=\"es\">\n<p>Es una de las llamadas m\u00e1scaras a lo Jano, de doble cara.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"small\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/coleccion\/sowei-or-bundu-mask-myl-11\/\">Jes\u00fas Arrimadas Saavedra \u00b7 original catalogue \u00b7 MYL-11<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"small\">This quotation retains the archive\u2019s wording. Editorial context and comparative sources do not certify the objects\u2019 attribution, age or provenance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MYL-10 and MYL-11 preserve different spellings of Sowei, Bundo and Bundu. The third selected record, MYL-6, is named Gonde. Bringing them together does not make them equivalent: the point is to examine distinctions retained in the historical catalogue. The text of MYL-11 mentions both Mende and Bassa. Those names remain part of the original document; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-35021","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35051,"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35021\/revisions\/35051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artedeafrica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}