A white-faced mask, patches of red around squinting eyeholes, nostrils and lips, think moustache, heavy brow
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White-Faced Mask

White-Faced Mask

This mask is whitewashed, a technique used in Atłak´ima masks to signify a spirit and possibly in this case, a ghost.

Owner

Iwakalas, Harry Hanuse, Mamalilikala (Village Island)

Catalogue Information

Provenance

Owned by Harry Hanuse until its forced surrender to Indian Agent William Halliday on March 25, 1922. Halliday later displayed and photographed the seized pieces at the Parish Hall in Alert Bay. After doing an inventory, he crated the items in June, and at the end of September he shipped some of them to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, on long-term loan from the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History). They remained in the possession of the ROM until the NMM pulled its loan and returned the pieces to the Nuyumbalees and U'mista cultural societies in 1988. In September 1993 Dan Hanuse Sr. requested that his father's pieces be transferred from Nuyumbalees to U'mista as per the wishes of the majority of Harry Hanuse's descendants.

Materials

Wood, Red Cedar; Paint; Metal; Fibre, Cotton

Accession Number

94.09.021

Physical Description

Lalułalagamł, carved and painted mask that could represent a ghost as it has startling eyes that do not seem to be human. The eyes on this mask have an appearance of being rolled back or representing sleep. The mask features a thin mustache indicating that it is male in character. The mask is whitewashed, a technique used in Atłak´ima masks to signify a spirit and possibly in this case, a ghost. The knife marks and the natural color of the wood are still visible below the thin whitewash. The mouth has an open expression that is said to be the look of ghosts as they speak and make their haunting sounds. The mask has nails hammered into the rims where cloth was once attached to conceal the back of the dancer’s head. White, black, red.