The Missing Women of Sande a Necessary Exercise in Museum Decolonization

The Missing Women of Sande A Necessary Exercise in Museum Decolonization

Susan Kart

y introduction to the art of Sierra Leone was curating a tiny exhibition of African art for the Smith College went something like this: Despite the Museum of Art, did I start to consider what is painfully absent overwhelming presence of African from our visual narratives on Sande art: our understanding and headpieces in the worlds’ museums, the appreciation of elderly women and their position as art patrons masquerade tradition is not widespread and performers of their own objects. Quite separately from the across the continent. Of the limited scholarly need to understand their role in the production of art, regions in Africa where performances requiring wooden mask Sande/Bondo members have now found themselves victimized headpiecesM were and are practiced, it is generally a performance and disparaged due to the international debate over their initia- of men. Only in West Africa does a di erent tradition of masked tion practices, which traditionally include genital modication dance take place, where women in Sierra Leone and Liberia are the of pubescent girls by female elders. e controversy over genital primary singers and dancers in masquerade as well as the wearers alteration, understood in Sande tradition to mark the death of and commissioners of their sculpted wooden masks (Phillips 1978: childhood and the beginning of adult life, has come to rest on the 265; Boone 1986; Lamp 2014). Among the Mende, Temne, and objects used in public by the most senior Sande women and those their neighbors, adults belong to organized societies—the Poro for appearing most frequently in our museums: their wooden masks. men and the Sande (Bondo) for women—both of which serve as Even though a mask in a museum is long divorced from the powerful political, social, and family entities.1 e Sande society mature woman who may have worn it and was never worn while organizes and hosts the women’s masked performances, which are she was operating on girls, the mask has been proclaimed a tool marked by elaborately carved wooden helmet masks. e masks, by which elder women mutilated their children, and museums stained black, appear as part of a black ber costume enveloping such as the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland and the British a woman’s body. e whole manifestation of woman, mask, and Museum in London have found themselves in the uncomfortable costume is referred to as Sowo. e Sowo preside over a handful of position of having to defend their displays of Sande sculptures, important public events, the primary being the celebration at the while arguing they are not condoning “FGM.” end of girls’ initiation into the Sande society, marking the end of As most Sande activities are conducted in private, the helmet their childhood and the beginning of their lives as adult women. masks worn by the Sowo are the public face of Sande, viewed by the Sowo also appear in public at weddings, funerals, and in litigation Mende during public appearances and subsequently by interna- of cases where men are accused of criminal activity against women. tional museum-going audiences. I suspect that because the Sowo is I am sure this sounds familiar to just about everyone who has the most important public representative of the Sande society, her learned about Sande masquerade arts. Only recently, though, as I mask has become a vector for contemporary concerns about Sande and its women. In addition, the mask wearers (if the mask was in S K is an assistant professor at Lehigh University with a joint use prior to its collection) are senior members of Sande, that is, appointment in the Department of Art, Architecture, and Design and older women. In Euro-American cultures—where the vast major- the Africana Studies program. Her research focuses on Senegalese art of ity of art museums are situated—the older woman is understood to the independence period and the exhibition and display of African art reside somewhere between the irrelevant and the obscene (Frueh objects. She has curated exhibitions of African art at Smith College, Le- 1994: 66, 70). at older women are empowered through Sande high University, and consults for the Allentown Museum of Art. She has culture to dictate their own femininity and to thwart the norms of published in Critical Interventions, ird Text, and Visual Resources. Euro-American society by shaping their daughters’ genitals ren- [email protected] ders them out of bounds for acceptability (Silverman 2004: 429).

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kart.indd 72 5/8/2020 1:00:14 PM 1 Pessima (deceased c. 1980) Sowo-wui mask of Ligba Rank (Ndoli Jowei). Moyambawo, Sierra Leone. Mid-20th century Wood; 17 5/8 x 8 x 8 ½ in Gift of Gwendolen M. Carter, Smith College Museum of Art SC 1960:55 Photo: Stephen Petegorsky

Many Sande women are now refugees residing in Euro-American projects—including reanimating the Sande and Poro societies—as settings and are therefore subject to nationalistic and racialized a means to assist with the cultural and historical losses incurred condemnation as well. in the largely devastated country.2 e unintended consequence of these eorts to document and preserve the contemporary activities and historical objects of Sande women has brought the socio- MASKS AND THE MUTILATION DEBATE political debate about genital surgeries into the art museum. For some time now, Sande has been active worldwide, largely as Some women who underwent Sande initiation as children are a result of the vicious civil wars in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) and now coming forward to condemn the practice’s inclusion of genital Liberia (1980s–early 2000s). Both countries saw mass displace- alteration. e international audience has been quick to proclaim ment of populations, horri c violence (including sexual) against its outrage at “female genital mutilation” (FGM) and attempts women and children, and the forced conscription of child soldiers to ban the practice worldwide are gaining traction (Mgbako (Zack-Williams 2011; Coulter 2008; Human Rights Watch 2003). et al. 2010; Mohamud, Radeny, and Ringheim 2006; World Sande survived in both countries because it moved with its mem- Health Organization, UNICEF, and United Nations Population bers to large cities, such as Freetown and Bo in Sierra Leone and Fund 1997). For example, in 2003, the UN declared February 6 Monrovia in Liberia, when the countryside became too dangerous. to be “International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Sande also traveled internationally, primarily to England and the Mutilation.” Regardless of one’s stance on altering healthy genital United States, as women and children ed the conicts as refugees. tissue in children, the sociopolitical debate runs into its own hy- Just as the two African countries were beginning to stabilize in the pocrisy on a regular basis. Euro-American societies comfortably early 2000s, the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014 created more devasta- grant their own mothers control over the genital alterations of tion. In Sierra Leone, recent initiatives by museums, scholars, and their male children through circumcision, yet they have made it activists at the international level have worked to support heritage illegal for immigrant mothers to alter their daughters (Bell 2005:

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kart.indd 73 5/8/2020 1:00:15 PM 127–28; Abu-Sahlieh 2006).3 Labiaplasty has become wildly popu- taught by the older women to girls before and during Sande ini- lar in the United States as older women want to keep their vaginas tiation (Boone 1986: 45–81). Her statements are echoed today in looking “young” and as teenagers want to sculpt their own genitals. the work of Dr. Fuambai Sia Ahmadu, who points out that male Nonmedical elective vaginal surgeries on teenagers are not pros- initiation among the Poro regards the vagina as an object of “awe ecuted under anti-FGM laws already on the books in the United and deference,” while Sande women are taught to “dominate the States, unless those teenagers are non-white immigrants.4 penis” for pleasure and for reproduction (Ahmadu 2000: 16–17). As the highly charged debate has arrived at the art museum, cu- e wooden masks commissioned by Sande women depict the rators and art historians are feeling the pressure to take a stand, entirety of these processes from birth through adolescence, ma- as museums are understood as sites of educational, institutional, turity, and ancestry. Commissioned by professional Ligba danc- and frequently cultural authority. Yet if museum professionals use ers and also by the head Sowei of each Sande chapter, the masks their exhibitions of Sande art to condemn the practice of genital highlight such abstract characteristics as modesty, integrity, eroti- surgeries, they risk repeating the colonial practice of criticizing the cism, and beauty, as well as the Sande spiritual realm. As there is a “primitive” nature of the colonized in order to prove the “civiliza- correlation between rank in Sande and a woman’s age, only older tion” of the colonizing Empire. To issue blanket positivist support women can commission and wear the high-ranking Sowei mask. for the Sande society and its art objects discounts the very real A dancer’s mask can be commissioned and worn by much younger testimonies of initiated women who nd the process barbaric and members. As the masks themselves distinguish between old age have suered from its eects. To ignore the debate altogether and and youth, they can help museums determine their own collec- focus only on the masks as art with a capital A is akin to the ostrich tion’s bias towards youthful representation. sticking its head in the sand. In all cases, the erasure of women and For example, the Smith College Museum of Art has a small their bodies (in particular those of older women) from museum but important collection of African art dating from the 1800s to exhibitions of Sande art has perpetuated a narrative of youthful the present, and they always have some of it on public view.7 One beauty, which unintentionally draws attention to initiation surger- highlight is a Sande helmet mask, or sowo-wui (Fig. 1) carved ca. ies. It furthermore comes at the expense of narratives regarding 1958 by Pessima, a master artist from Moyambawo, Sierra Leone. middle-aged and mature women, the same women whose masks e headpiece is dramatic: parallel striations on the head imply a are now in museums. tightly braided coiure, while snakes, a reptile, and a moveable bird decorate the top of the headpiece. e mask possesses a high fore- head, small facial features, and two small slits carved between the THE WOMEN AND ART OF SANDE At or slightly before puberty, Sierra Leonean and Liberian girls chin and rst ring of the neck to allow a wearer to see out. Pessima’s assemble into cohorts to go through Sande training together.5 e headpiece exempli es the ndoli jowei style of mask made for a pro- girls are removed from their families and society in general and fessional Sande dancer of Ligba rank. From Phillips’s (1995) and are admitted exclusively to the company of adult Sande women for Boone’s (1986) interviews with Mende men and women, we un- an extended period of time.6 Freed from their roles as daughters, derstand that the designs for the hair on Sande masks are elabo- sisters, and children, the girls can be literally reborn as women rate variations on actual women’s hairstyles. Young women prefer (Boone 1986: 45–79). Older women, therefore, are entirely in hairstyles involving ne, tight braids, oen in elaborate patterns. charge of de ning the roles they hold in society and wish to cede Older women prefer a looser style, where the braids do not cling to their ospring in future generations. Day has noted that “the to the scalp and can number as few as three or four. is style, separation of community responsibilities along gender lines as- a sowo-bolo (sowo’s cap), produces what Boone translated as “big sumes that women are the supreme authorities in their own sphere hair” (Boone 1986: 184). e pattern of tight, V-shaped “braids” and that this sphere is of equal importance to that of men” (2012: on Pessima’s mask thus indicates youthfulness, and the mask cele- 24). Sande indeed functions as a corporate body, capable of en- brates the newly born adult Sande woman. forcing Sande laws, ensuring correct behavior on the part of men Compare Pessima’s mask to one at the British Museum (Fig. and women, and protecting women’s interests (Day 2012: 24). is 2), which displays a very dierent hairstyle: the “big hair” of an protection is one reason girls participate in its initiations. More older woman and the eye slits for the wearer located at the center importantly, girls only become adults aer going through the chal- of the mask’s eyes. Boone claimed that when a Sowei wore her lenging educational training directed by Sande leaders. Midwifery, mask, the “mask-head forms a Janus with the head of the human women’s health, political advocacy, and judicial oversight were/ being inside; she, with her human eyes, has added to her all the are the traditional occupations of the head Sowei, the woman who power of the mask’s eyes to see inside the spirit world” (Boone served/s as head of her town or region’s Sande society. Women of 1986: 176–77) e more powerful placement of the eye slits, allow- lesser rank, or Ligba, are dance and voice instructors for the girls ing the wearer’s eye to align with the mask’s (rather than looking and oen their surgeons. Ligba and other Sande members are through eye slits placed in the neck, for example), along with the tasked with teaching girls about puberty, sex, childbirth, cooking, hairstyle indicates that this mask is most likely one of the highest and maintaining a household. Training also includes labor per- rank, belonging only to a senior Sowei leader of the Sande society. formed on behalf of the elder Sande women in order to teach the Given that only older women achieve the rank of Sowei, this sowo- girls “modesty, diligence, and respect for one’s seniors” (Phillips wui mask was the property of one of the oldest and most powerful 1978: 267). In addition, Boone once argued convincingly that the women in her society. physical beauty and sexual nature of women are critical pieces of I wrote the object label for Pessima’s mask to focus on him as female power in Mende society, and these attributes are actively the artist, given that the mask was previously unattributed to him. I also briey described the Sande tradition, but I did not draw

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kart.indd 74 5/8/2020 1:00:15 PM 2 Mende people, sowo-wui mask of Sowei rank Kopama, Sierra Leone, before 1938 Wood; 37 cm x 20 cm x 24 cm British Museum, purchase from Glending &Co, ex. Capt. R.S. Rattray Photo: ©Trustees of the British Museum Af1938, 1004.12

attention to the mask’s hairstyle as an indication of age or rank, displaying a dozen Sande masks of both Sowei and Ligba rank, the in large part because the mask was carved on commission for a Baltimore exhibition introduced greater diversity than had ever European and thus never worn by a Sande dancer. 8 And the object been present in a US exhibition. I have signaled as the “older woman type” in the British Museum is not on display. Nothing is necessarily wrong with the Smith in- INITIATION IN EXHIBITIONS stallation or the British Museum’s mask being in storage; however, In her otherwise positive review of the new African art galleries a stronger model is o ered at the Baltimore Museum of Art. for the Baltimore Sun, Mary Carole McCauley, a reporter, found In 2015 the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland completed signicant fault with the Baltimore Museum’s display of Sande an extensive renovation of its African art galleries. As the museum masks, stating, “Despite the charming touches, the masks are un- was in possession of a uniquely large collection of Sande helmet deniably powerful and even frightening—as bets their role in a masks, curator Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch decided to open the controversial female initiation ritual that has traditionally involved African galleries with a display of twelve of them.9 is, she argued, genital mutilation.” McCauley was upset that nowhere in the ex- was an important corrective for African art exhibitions that, in hibition did the museum acknowledge that “Sande initiation rites order to document the diversity of African art, display one object have frequently included the widely condemned practice of female from each culture in order to represent as many cultural groups circumcision” (McCauley 2015). Her complaints prompted the as possible.10 Gunsch, like many in the eld of African art, is con- museum’s PR department to respond: “e curator chose to focus cerned that the “one object from each region” approach presents a on the visual expression of the Sande society and the aesthetic skewed view of uniformity within cultures, as if one Sande mask value of the masks themselves rather than one aspect of the rite could stand in for all of them over three centuries of creation.11 By of passage for some members” (Anne Mannix-Brown, quoted in

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kart.indd 75 5/8/2020 1:00:16 PM McCauley 2015). Gunsch was also concerned that nowhere else in present to the public. Part of the problem is that all the bodies are the galleries did the museum deal with controversial anatomical missing in our museum displays of Sande masks; we frequently modi cations when exhibiting objects (i.e., their display of tiny silk only have the headpieces (not the entire masquerade costume), shoes made for Chinese women with bound feet), and she did not and those headpieces more oen than not are representative of want the African art galleries alone to bear that burden.12 A sub- younger, not older, women. sequent angry editorial on May 26, 2015, in the Sun, “Masking the Truth at the BMA: Exhibit Leaves out a Human Rights Violation SO WHERE ARE THE OLD WOMEN? Connection to the Exhibit,” prompted museum action at a higher As museum collections oen limit curatorial choices, we must level. e deputy directors for curatorial aairs and education remember that exhibitions of Sande art are curatorial theses, based posted a lengthy response on the BMA’s blog, part of which reads: on the relatively static nature of the collections that curators are tasked with displaying. We oen learn more about the museum’s Just this week, Nigerian president Goodluck Johnson signed a bill that criminalizes female genital mutilation or cutting … e practice collection history and that collection’s relationship with the heritage is also on the rise in the US, where according to Newsweek, more of the country in which it sits than we do about the cultures/coun- than half a million women are at risk of undergoing the procedure tries that produced the individual objects on display (Arvidsson 13 or have already experienced it. How do we as viewers hold these 2011: 39, 70–71). In addition, the type of Sowei mask at the British stories—stories of beauty and creativity, culture and tradition, indi- viduality and self-ecacy, pain and suering—simultaneously? And Museum was rarely collected, given its spiritual and political im- what is the museum’s role in negotiating and presenting multiple and portance to the Sande society as a whole. It is far more common to sometimes contradictory meanings? (Fisher and Manning 2015). see the ndoli jowei style in museums, as these were more easily obtained by purchasing them from their female owners (who could I argue that the museum bears signi cant responsibility in how then commission a new mask for themselves) or else directly from they exhibit their material, and they are in a position to actively the artists themselves. Of the Baltimore Museum’s masks, for ex- present the multiple meanings held by their objects. One glaring ample, over thirty are of the ndoli jowei type, while only four can be problem with the FGM controversy at the Baltimore Museum, comfortably identi ed as Sowei. Fewer high-ranking elder masks however, is the absence of older women in the debate. Clearly, girls in museums translates to the unintentional skewing of displays who have undergone genital surgery have grown up to become toward representations of younger women. As collections of his- women and subsequently senior citizens. And yet, as the case illus- torical material are unlikely to change much over time, exhibition trates, the Sun and the BMA are focused on the surgical initiations of the collections also tends to experience the same inertia: items of young girls. e international condemnation of FGM deals with are locked into the past in which they were collected, leaving little older women only in order to condemn their desire to maintain room for the present day, or for present-day needs from certain initiation traditions and punish them for their roles as surgeons in objects (Arvidsson 2011: 69). In addition, the generally decreasing the practice (Abusharaf 2006: 4, 7–8). Otherwise, the surgically ad- funding for new acquisitions of current works of art that could rep- justed bodies of older women are completely invisible in the narra- resent Sierra Leone, Liberia, or Sande/Bondo/Poro culture today tives against initiation. In this international debate, the legitimacy further forces us to exhibit the Sande masks as “timeless,” since of older women’s own bodies is being invalidated and erased. e contemporary works by these artists is oen not being acquired. fact of having undergone genital surgery is used to ridicule wom- We have to actively resist allowing a lack of funding to determine en’s bodies as victims of a patriarchal society, to discount women’s our exhibition choices. We know that expecting our nineteenth ability (and desire) to experience sexual pleasure, and to invalidate century masks to explain current-day Sierra Leone aristic (and the way they choose to bring up their own daughters (Shweder sociopolitical) practice is unacceptable, and museum leadership 2000). Very little attention, however, is paid to why adult women needs to be held accountable for allowing stalled collection activity wanted or needed to go through Sande initiation. One initiated to determine the nature of African art exhibitions. woman (who had genital surgery) commented, “It’s a big shame if Perhaps the most critical problem for museums in their exhi- you are named as a woman that is not part of the [Sande] society. bition of Sande masks is that the Sowo (the entirety of woman, You need to be a part of it. If not you will just be like nothing.” Her mask, and costume) is absent, thereby eliminating the bodies of friend (also a woman who had surgery as part of her initiation) the women who served as Sowo from consideration. Almost all agreed, saying, “It’s like you’re accepted now in certain parts of the exhibitions of Sande masks (or any African masks, for that matter) society … you can talk where all the women talk, you can go where are therefore contingent on documentary photographs or videos all the women go. You’re allowed to go a lot of places, you’re not that supplement the incomplete headdress with images of the full ostracized” (Kalokoh 2017: 140).14 costume as worn and performed. As Sande masks are produced for adult, initiated women like In all documented public appearances of Sande masks, the Sowo’s these two, one form of assistance museums can give to West mask and clothing completely conceal the woman underneath. is African women is to display their stories in conjunction with their allows the Sowo to act on behalf of the entire Sande society and the own objects. Museum displays should convey just as much about ancestral/spirit worlds, not just as an individual. e mask plays only Sande elders and their bodies as they do about Sande youth. As a small part in this bodily concealment. In fact, without the uniform scholars and museum professionals, we have not adequately con- the helmet mask is merely a wooden museum object, unrecogniz- fronted the absence of older women in museum displays (and able even to the Mende. Phillips records how she showed photo- not just older African women), and yet these same women were graphs of masks in museums to Sierra Leonean women and “found the patrons, users, guardians, and sellers of the very objects we that the bare headpiece, deprived of its costume, ornaments, and

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kart.indd 76 5/8/2020 1:00:16 PM 3 T.J. Alldridge, “The Bundu ‘Devil’ who inquires into the conduct of wicked men.” Photograph of a Sowei in full dress Sherbro District, Sierra Leone. c. 1894–99 Wood, palm fiber, fabric (Alldridge and Leslie 1900: 194.) Photo: courtesy of James J. Ross Archive of African Images, Yale University, http://rossarchive.library. yale.edu/web/site/index.php?globalnav=splash record 1003.2

dramatic impersonation, could become virtually unrecognizable as for what they might say about the gods, “fetishes,” “devils,” or even ndoli jowei. People would puzzle over these photographs and then bodies (in the form of portraiture) of the indigenous populations o er a comment that amounted to a kind of disowning: “It might of European colonies. e costumes associated with masks, how- be a sowei, but it’s not from here” (Phillips 2015: 19). ever, were oen made of impermanent materials like raa, cloth, and seedpods or intangibles like body paint. ese posed a problem for transportation, display, and conservation and were usually ABSENT BODIES, MISSING STORIES: not collected in the rst place. THE COLONIAL LEGACY is does not mean, however, that the costume was not of inter- e removal of the headpiece from its costume is largely a result est to colonial Europeans.15 In early records of the Sowo, the cos- of nineteenth century colonial practices of procuring masks for tume, wooden headpiece, and the woman wearer received fairly display in Europe. As the Sowo headpiece was carved (like a sculp- equal attention, a situation largely di erent from the subsequent ture) in wood (an acceptable artistic medium) and, most impor- museum fascination with the headpiece alone. T.J. Alldridge was tantly, gurative (although far more abstract than European art one of the rst Europeans to photograph the high-ranking mask of the time), colonizers saw the mask as the creative product of worn as part of the Sowo ensemble, complete with a white head- an “other” culture. African masks were interesting to nineteenth wrap indicating the presence of a high-ranking Sowei underneath century anthropologists and art historians (and hence museums) (Fig. 3). Alldridge served in various posts for the British Colonial

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kart.indd 77 5/8/2020 1:00:24 PM government from the late 1870s through early 1900s and wrote women alike. Furthermore, as Day reminds us, warrior-chief skills some of the rst accounts of the Sande published in Europe. were taught to men and boys in Poro, yet women were believed His description of the Sowo, which he calls a “Bundu devil,” ap- able to channel these skills in the face of pregnancy, birth, and de- pears in all of them: fense of their families and fellow Sande women (Day 2012: 30). Oen, in Alldridge’s own time and still today, senior Sande women Her distinctive costume is unvarying … except as regards the head- served/serve as equals to the paramount chiefs in their towns. piece … Her dress is of long shaggy bre, dyed black, and over her head she wears a grotesque mask … I was also fortunate enough to obtain possession of a very ne specimen of a Bundu devil mask, THE CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITION: which is now to be seen in the Ethnological Section of the British WHY “FGM” BELONGS IN THE ART MUSEUM Museum (Alldridge 1894: 135–36). Alldridge’s refusal to collect the entire mask ensemble is symp- tomatic of what has been de ned by scholars as an act of colonial Alldridge stresses his acquisition of the “devil mask,” not the violence: a forced separation of the bodies of the colonized from “dress” or “costume” of the Sande medicine woman. While he has the artifacts of their own history (Savage 2008: 74). Historians and correctly determined that the British Museum would be interested artists alike have critiqued the staging of a “decapitated” mask iso- in purchasing a wooden mask, he does not even bother to collect lated in a vitrine or hung from a wall in a museum.16 Arguably, the rest of the ensemble, as he knew it would be problematic: African masks in public collections not only serve as particu- larly poignant indexes of the historical violence enacted against Civilization is making strides even in this most secret of native societies, for whereas formerly only country-cloth was used for leggings the colonized themselves, but also the museum’s discomfort in sewn up at the feet … today some of the devils may be seen wear- examining its own dependence on that colonial violence. As ing tan-coloured stockings peeping above the lace-up black boots or González astutely notes, tan shoes which many of them now aect. I must admit that these modern things do not harmonise with the bulky brous costume, Museums worked to guarantee the meaning of cultural patrimony and considerably detract from the characteristic eect of this bar- and, in many cases, colonial privilege for imperial nations. To change barous dress with which so much fetish and mystery is associated the museum and its forms of display was to question not only the (Alldridge 1910: 223–24). validity of the power relations of the past but also the meaning of that past for those living in the present (2008: 66). Alldridge and his colleague Harry Hamilton Johnston, writing from across the border in Liberia, both remarked their surprise As a result, the colonial (and sometimes postcolonial) record that members of the Sande/Bondo society in the two countries of collection continues to inuence the exhibition and display of would use men’s pants (the “leggings” made of country cloth) as Sande headpieces in the present day. e masks in museum collec- well as European pants, stockings ,and shoes to conceal the legs tions display the collection history of the late nineteenth century of the Sowo (Fig. 4) (Johnston 1906: 1031). ey were also enter- and its conceptions of class, gender, and race (Werner 2011: 15). tained that the European top hat, a symbol of the well-to-do gen- ey record more accurately the views of T.J. Alldridge and his tleman, was occasionally worn by high-ranking Sande women and contemporaries than they do those of nineteenth century Sierra even incorporated into the wooden helmet masks of Sande danc- Leonean culture, or Sande society today. erefore, we struggle to ers (Fig. 5) (Alldridge 1913: 773). While Alldridge and Johnston nd productive means to work beyond, around, or through the both amassed collections of Sande helmet masks, neither made colonial histories of the objects on display in order to nd their any eort to collect the costumes—parts of which were European contemporary relevance.17 is legacy has been almost impossible and therefore contained no exotic value for museum display. to disrupt, leaving curators and museum educators today in the e wooden mask with a European top hat, however, was a dif- situation of constantly narrating colonialism in order to arrive at a ferent story. e mask Alldridge speaks of selling to the British moment where a contemporary story can exist. Museum wears a top hat and also has two identical faces, one A recent exhibition at the British Museum attempted a corrective on the front and one on the back, making it one of only a small exhibition by placing Alldridge’s top-hat-wearing mask on display, number of Janus-faced Sande masks. While the appropriation of surrounded by information about its nineteenth century collection actual European goods was troubling to the supposed authenticity and documentation interwoven with contemporary videos and of Sowo costume, the artistic appropriation of European imagery photographs from Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leonean diaspora in constituted a ne discovery for Alldridge. London. Members of Sande living in London were invited to assist Distracted by their understanding of Mende women using men’s in educational programming, but they ended up contributing much clothing to perform a dialogue between the “African” and the more to the exhibition. e Sande women insisted that the ratty “European,” Alldridge and Johnston missed the more relevant con- raa fringe attached to the headpiece be thrown out and new fringe nection between the Sande and Poro, or male and female dichot- attached to the mask. ey further insisted that the mask be prop- omy embodied in the Sowo regalia. Mende women did not wear erly named. When Alldridge procured the mask, he had not known pants in Alldridge’s time; their usurpation of men’s clothing served that all Sande masks are individually named by their owners, so he as a not-so-subtle reminder of the Sowo’s power to defend Sande did not record that information. e Sande women therefore held a women against men. By attaching a sculpture of a woman’s head naming ceremony and then regied the now properly named and on top of black raa ber hung from men’s clothing, the women attired mask to the British Museum (Kart 2017: 896). in Alldridge and Johnston’s photographs were marking their com- e goal of the exhibition Sowei Mask: e Spirit of Sierra plete control over the spiritual and ancestral realms for men and Leone was to use one single object and retrace its history from its

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kart.indd 78 5/8/2020 1:00:24 PM 4 C. H. Firmin, “The Beri-Nyâna, or men’s devil of Western Liberia (The Bundu of Sierra Leone)” Photograph of two dancers of Sowei rank, Northwestern Liberia, c. 1904 Wood, palm fiber, fabric From Harry Hamilton Johnston, Liberia. Vol II, (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1906), 1031. Reprinted in Alldridge, T.J. “Sierra Leone.” In Customs of the World: A Popular Account of the Manners, Rites and Ceremonies of Men and Women in All Countries, edited by Walter Hutchinson, 768-92. (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1913), 771. Photo: courtesy of James J. Ross Archive of African Images, Yale University, http://rossarchive.library. yale.edu/web/site/index.php?globalnav=splash record 329

carving to its contemporary exhibition.18 is placed the object in Of primary concern to Basu was discussing Alldridge’s role in a chronological and temporal continuum, where it could serve as bringing the object out of Sierra Leone so that the colonial history a mediator between past and present, diaspora and homeland. e of the object could nally be acknowledged. fact that the mask had two faces and wore a European hat provided And yet three years aer the exhibition opened, the British co-curator Paul Basu “with an opportunity to explore the entangle- Museum drew the ire of Anna Davis and Alimatu Dimonekene, ments of European and African culture during the colonial era (in- for exhibiting a “devil” mask (notice the reanimation of Alldridge’s cluding the bidirectional material ows as embodied in the mask’s colonial language).21 Davis, writing for a free urban circular, the design).”19 He further stressed, Evening Standard, titled her article “British Museum Accused of ‘Celebrating’ FGM by Displaying Cutter’s Mask.” In it she wrote that In the display we wanted to present a plurality of “framings” of the women like Dimonekene were “survivors of FGM living in London mask—as ethnographic object, art historical object, an object entan- [and] said they still suer ashbacks to the mask, which they said gled in cultures of colonialism, as postcolonial national icon, and to juxtapose it with an audiovisual presentation which showed such is used at the end of cutting ceremonies in Sierra Leone to terrorise masks animated as part of masquerade performance rather than young girls into keeping quiet about their ordeal” (Davis 2016). static art objects.20 is is why a more conservative approach usually prevails, such

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kart.indd 79 5/8/2020 1:00:25 PM as the one taken by Smith College and the Baltimore Museum, experiences have been converging in social media such that opin- where Gunsch and I focused on the artistry of the Sande masks. ions not favorably received in England, such as @Mami_Na_Pawa’s Yet the seemingly necessary corrective presence of contemporary active support of circumcision,23 can be safely aired in the global context in the exhibition of historical objects was also heavily digital arena. Similarly, a young girl, Fatmata, who refused to go criticized. While the Baltimore Museum was targeted for “paper- through Sande initiation in Sierra Leone, was able to nd support ing over the reality [of FGM]” by not presenting a contemporary for her cause in the international voices of other women backing narrative along with its display of Sande masks (Baltimore Sun her up (Ahmadu 2020). Social media further allows for public 2015), the British Museum exhibit was criticized for the exact op- discussions and the wide dissemination of scholarly research into posite. Davis argued that the British museum “celebrated” female socio/politico/medical arguments for and against Sande initiation genital surgeries in part because of the involvement of Sande and genital modication. Anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu, for women living in London who condoned the mask and its place example, posts all of her scholarly writing publicly online, where it in their own history. can be as freely accessed as anti-FGM literature. Access to knowledge is, aer all, what museums pride themselves on doing so well. e scholarly group who produced SOLUTIONS? My concerns for the girls and women who are part of the Sande sierraleoneheritage.com in order to bring cultural heritage back initiation debate parallel those for the institutions who possess into local consciousness in Sierra Leone was formed by museum and exhibit the historical objects of Sande women. Both situations professionals. But just building websites is not a solution. Museums revolve around the notions of “young” and “old” where complex can do more to partner with Sande women across digital plat- past processes are maintained into the present day. e formerly forms as they plan and execute new exhibitions. We can ask hon- unquestioned use of genital excision to mark a young girl’s pas- estly what Sande women want and need to see in an exhibition of sage into adulthood now nds itself dened in parts of the globe their historic objects before we even go into the basement of the as barbaric, where a 44-year old Sierra Leonean, F.A. Cole, accuses museum to see what we have in storage. If we understand tech- her father of deceit for allowing her to be mutilated by “witches” nology as a tool able to connect scholarly and public debate in a (Cole 2017). e hard-fought battles by curators to acknowledge virtual space, the museum can oer a real-world location for this and correct wrongs of older ethnographic displays of “primitive connection to occur in person. art” have been declared ignorant of the need to protect the human Museums therefore should embrace their unique position as rights of young girls like Cole. real-world contact zones for contemporary audiences and the con- While the concerns about genital surgeries are not for the temporary meanings of objects for these audiences. As dened by museum to resolve, it can certainly be a proactive partner for James Cliord (1997: 192–93), the “contact zone” was a metaphor Sande women from within the educational, social, and cultural for the museum’s role in negotiating between the colonial empire realms in which museums are located. For museums with Sande and the rest of the world it collected and to which it subsequently art objects in their collections, I have suggested already that the compared itself. e “contact zone” was a powerful tool for curators inclusion of a fuller Sande narrative that disrupts the traditional and art historians alike and it assisted scholars in the postcolonial focus on youth and girls at the expense of maturity and age is one period to reconstruct what had been lost/taken from African art possibility. Others follow from scholars in museum education, objects during colonialism in order to acknowledge a painful past. and there are good takeaways from the experimental exhibition More is required for today’s interconnected audiences. e con- at the British Museum and the display of multiple masks at the tact zone now must now redened as the point of connection be- Baltimore Museum of Art. tween the contemporary viewer and an object existing in shared Garoian’s theories of performative museums coalesce with Basu’s contemporary and virtual space. Along with their historical pasts, projects of cultural reanimation and González’s critique of the objects like Sande masks maintain ongoing histories, and these museum apparatus (Garoian 2001; Basu 2015; González 2008). All need adequate expression in museum contexts. Just as the mean- three strongly argue for an “eneshment” of the objects themselves ings of Sowo headpieces shied along their routes from making in the present day, facilitated by the intertwining of actual bodies to use to colonial collection to public display, we must not assume of viewers with objects in the gallery, so that both become knowl- that their postcolonial meanings are now absolute. Appadurai has edge producers, bearers of historical responsibility and co-cura- argued that the “social life” of an object represents what an object tors of exhibition knowledge.22 While not celebrated as such by the from the past is understood to mean for its present audiences media, the British Museum’s engagement with the Sande society (Savage 2008: 79). us, for Sarian Kamara, a nineteenth century in London proved such “eneshments” are possible and powerful. top-hat-wearing mask in the British Museum is the contemporary “face of the cutter,” as she demands it answer for its role in current In a similar manner, Sande women in diaspora are talking back to 24 the past experiences of themselves, their mothers, and their grand- social practices. For Ahmadu, being circumcised is a symbol of mothers in order to question a tradition that by its very nature is her pride in being Sierra Leonean and part of her identity that she designed to empower women to speak back to power. must constantly defend to an international audience that sees her As witnessed in the case of the Sande society in London interven- body as “mutilated” (Ahmadu 2019). ing in the British Museum’s presentation of a Sande mask, Sande Garoian suggests that, instead of seeking historical absolutes women in diaspora have greater access to the museums housing in objects, we should understand that “works of art represent the the objects of their foremothers. Sande women in Sierra Leone, potential to dialogue with history” and viewers have the ability to however, have greater access to the Sande society. e two groups’ “challenge the monologic pedagogy of museums” despite the “un- predictability of visitor responses and narratives” (Garoian 2001:

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kart.indd 80 5/8/2020 1:00:25 PM 5 Mende or Temne people Sowo-wui, janus-faced dance mask (ndoli jowei) of Ligba rank Sierra Leone, ca. 1884 Wood; 43 cm x 25 cm x 30 cm British Museum, purchase from T.J. Alldridge 1886 Photo: ©Trustees of the British Museum Af1886, 1126.1.a-b

236). Knowledge making that occurs in dialogue between object, they are not just about the initiation of young girls, they are about institution, and visitor creates a museum that is an “integral part the sexual maturity of women and the public performance of that of community life” (Garoian 2001: 238). is means that if we sexuality in front of other women, men, and boys. e Sowo brings desire the museum to be an interpretive space where we encourage the past of the ancestors and spirits rmly into the present when viewers to participate in exhibitions, we discuss genital altering of she dances, but also when her headpiece is on view in a museum. children in public. When we invite the visitor to share her history, e presence of the past in our current space creates a contem- it may be one of FGM and of the horric consequences it has had porary legitimacy for middle-aged and older Sande women. e and continues to have. It may include the abuses by some women masks point out how older women still maintain an important of the initiation tradition for money or inuence. It may stem from and, in fact, insurmountable presence in social and political life, concerns of patriarchal control over women’s sexuality. But it may and how Sande protects their autonomy as women. also include experiences by those who have chosen to go through Where the Baltimore Museum began by displaying multiple genital surgery, or those who are fervent supporters of Sande, who masks, we can now go further. We need to discuss Mende women cannot imagine being a woman without being Sande. as art patrons; we should speak about how older women started an e Sande masks speak to all these histories; all of these nar- art market that came to encompass the desires of the entire colo- ratives are true even as they seem to stand in opposition. is is nial world and collectors of African masks ever since. We need to why we must let go of our positivist and preservationist strategies continue researching the provenance of our collections: whether that prioritize an aesthetic point of view, a linear history, a mean- the masks on view were bought from Mende women or from carving based only on the original use-context for a Sande mask. e ers, traders, or middlemen. We already display the colonial vio- objects themselves contain fully contradictory meanings. For one, lence of collecting through the exhibition of masks long removed

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kart.indd 81 5/8/2020 1:00:26 PM from their costumes and women wearers; therefore we can work engage in mutual conversation over our shared objects—the out- to interpret the parallel narratives of violence against women and come being that active debate happens in a public space: the realm girls for those who need to hear that narrative. And, we can discuss of the Sowo, the realm of the Sande mask. the signi cance of genital surgery and how, without it, women in When we ask viewers for their opinion and to share their expe- Sierra Leone are not considered women; that the struggle by older riences, we add them to the sum total value and meaning of the women to keep the tradition alive is not a struggle to undermine exhibition and, of course, to the masks themselves. e activism of women’s sexual pleasure, but a struggle to ensure young girls a Sande women today should spur us—the curators, art historians, place of power in adult society. Female genital excision draws its and museum goers—not just to examine the wrongs committed value in part from how it is understood to create women. To deny during the colonial period but also to confess how much of that its importance is to deny the richness of being both Sierra Leonean period we have pulled forward into the present, at the expense of and an adult woman. e surgery indeed signi es many aspects making room for present-day needs and narratives—i.e., What of Mende women’s lives: the fear of adolescence, the joy of sex, the art are Sande women patronizing today? What are they buying? realities of marriage, childrearing, polygamy, childbirth, divorce, What artists do they support? Why are we not exhibiting that? As menopause, the harsh conditions of entrenched female poverty, we have seen, Sande women are actively engaged with each other and the disorienting eects of living in exile/diaspora/contempo- online and face to face, in and out of diaspora. ey should have rary global society. access to their society’s objects, especially those in public collec- As global citizens we can certainly advocate for change, for a tions, to use as they see t. e sowo-wui have always served as reexamination of the process of woman-making that depends on the public face of Sande, as the vector for communication, as the genital surgery, and we can certainly advocate for more choice on catalyst for life-changing events in women’s lives. We need to let the part of women to experience initiation. By bringing constitu- the masks do exactly what they were commissioned to do: place ents together in actual spaces in a museum environment, muse- women into the public sphere and empower them to act. ums can provide audiences with a real-world location in which to

Notes mask had been in Sierra Leone and obtained the mask 20 Paul Basu, email to author, June30, 2017. I wish to express my deep thanks to Director Jessica Nicoll from Guy Massie-Taylor, a British art teacher and 21 Dimonekene was initiated in Sierra Leone when she and the curatorial sta at the Smith College Museum of patron of Pessima. was 16 and has since become an activist for ending the Art, and to Drs. Paul Basu and Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch 8 e Smith mask was commissioned from Pessima practice. She called the mask at the British Museum a for sharing their experiences with me. I am also grateful by Guy Massie-Taylor, who from 1956–63 amassed “Bando Devil” (Davis 2016). I wish to add that she uses to Costa Petridis, who read an early version of this essay, a highly regarded collection of Sande masks, most of the word “devil” to intentionally disparage the object and to my anonymous peer reviewer at African Arts who which were purchased upon his death by the Kelvin- and vilify its non-Christian status. is is not the same contributed fundamentally to the strength of this article. grove Art Gallery (now the Glasgow Museums). as those who use the term “devil” as a way of coopting All errors and misstatements, of course, are my own. 9 e Baltimore Museum has over thirty- ve the colonial language to take back the derogatory name 1 Sande is the name for the society in the Mende Sande/Bondo masks from the late nineteenth through for positive use, as is oen the case in Sande/Bondo/ language. Among the neighboring Temne, and related mid-twentieth centuries in its collection. Poro tradition today. groups just over the border in Liberia, it is called Bondo, 10 Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, interview with author, 22 e language of “intertwining” and “eneshment” and the terms are used interchangeably. My arguments Accra, Ghana, August 11, 2017. is from Merlo-Ponty, cited in Garoian 2001: 240. here incorporate the display of masks relating to women 11 Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, email with author, 23 Pawa’s Instagram bio reads “Challenging anti-FGM of all cultures who participate in Sande/Bondo, whether September 6, 2017. propaganda. We are initiated, not mutilated. OUR in West Africa or in diaspora. My use of “Sande” 12 Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, interview with author, bodies. Our cultures. Our choice.” throughout this essay, therefore, is shorthand for Sande/ Accra, Ghana, August 11, 2017. 24 Kamara is a Sierra Leonean activist against genital Bondo. 13 is is somewhat of a bait and switch, as Newsweek alteration, cited in Davis 2016. 2 An international project by museums, professors, attributes the rise in genital surgeries to increased im- and individuals created the website sierraleoneheritage. migrant populations from “African and Middle Eastern References cited org. e site uses museum object databases, interviews, countries” (Wescott 2015). Abu-Sahlieh, Sami A. Aldeeb. 2006. “Male and Female videos, and documentary to connect contemporary 14 ese women are identi ed as participants B and C Circumcision: e Myth of the Dierence.” In Female individuals with past practices (see Basu 2015). Also see in Nennah Kalokoh Kalokoh’s 2017 dissertation on how Circumcision in Multicultural Perspectives, pp. 47–72. the discussion of exhibitions involving Mende collabo- women in Sierra Leone experienced and understood rators in Phillips (2001: 71–73). genital surgery as part of their initiation through Sande/ Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 3 Another example emerges in scholarly articles that Bondo. Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa. 2006. Female Circumcision: promote circumcision of African men to help combat 15 In a slideshow for the Anthropological Institute Multicultural Perspectives. Philadelphia: University of HIV, while Canada and the UK have all but ceased of Great Britain and Ireland, Alldridge displayed the male circumcision, as the health claims have not proven photograph included here as Figure 3. e meeting Pennsylvania Press. sucient to continue the practice (Darby and Svoboda minutes noted the audience’s fascination: “e native Ahmadu, Fuambai Sia. 2000. “Rites and Wrongs: An 2007: 303, 313; Silverman 2004). customs of Poro and Bundu and the Bundu Devil, also Insider/Outsider Reects on Power and Excision.” In 4 is data is from multiple sources. See for example the Tasso men, were extremely particular, the costumes Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund (eds.), Female Abusharaf 2006; Bell 2005; American College of being beyond imagination” (Alldridge 1899). Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Committee on 16 Fred Wilson has made a career out of creating “Circumcision” in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Gynecologic Practice 2020) installations that expose colonial and exhibitionary Change, pp. 283–312. London: Lynne Rienner. 5 Along with the Mende and Temne, neighboring violence (González 2008: 64–119). Ahmadu, Fuambai Sia. 2019. “Imagining Pleasure groups in Sierra Leone and Liberia such as the Temne, 17 Arvidsson notes nineteenth century European Gola, Kono, Sherbro, Vai, and others also send their girls museums were “ocially charged with representing the and Pain: Recognition, Regulation, and Enjoyment in to Sande/Bondo training. nation’s cultural history” (emphasis mine). In so doing, Relation to Female Genital Discourses” [blog post]. 6 Over generations, Sande has had to change its the objects became part of the history of the colonial October 30. http://www.fuambaisiaahmadu.com/blogs/ traditional isolation period. e society now allows for empire, not the history of the people and the objects that archives/10-2019. multiple training sessions during school vacations and were colonized (Arvidsson 2011: 39–41, 45). allows younger girls to participate at the same time as 18 e strategy of using a single mask as the focus of Ahmadu, Fuambai Sia. 2020. “Bondo in the Twenty- rst their older sisters. an entire exhibition was also used by curator Amanda Century: Female Circumcision, Choice and the Case 7 I curated the installation Object Histories: From Maples in her exhibition e Dancing “Sowei”: Perform- of Fatmata in Kono District, Sierra Leone” [blog post]. the African Continent to the SCMA Galleries, which ran ing Beauty in Sierra Leone, which ran at the Cantor Arts January 11. http://www.fuambaisiaahmadu.com/. August 2018–June 2020. Christa Clarke was retained to Center, Stanford University, from March 2018–April curate the next, and thankfully larger, public installation 2019. at exhibition did include information on female Alldridge, T.J. 1894. “Wanderings in the Hinterland of that was scheduled to open in summer 2020. While I genital surgery as a contested worldwide practice, along Sierra Leone.” e Geographic Journal 4 (2): 123–40. was researching the Sande mask at Smith, I discovered with its focus on beauty as taught by older women Alldridge, T.J. 1899. “Exhibition of Lantern Slides.” the artist (previously unknown) thanks to an article by to younger ones. To my knowledge, it has not been Paul Basu featuring a photograph of the Smith mask criticized in the press for its handling of female genital Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain at the feet of Pessima and his wife (Basu 2011: 35).e surgeries as have the other exhibitions I cite here. and Ireland 26 (1–2): 64–65, plates X–XIII. timeline correlated to when the owner of the Smith 19 Paul Basu, email to author, June30, 2017. Alldridge, T.J. 1910. A Transformed Colony, Sierra

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