Headdress (Ago Egungun)

CC0 Public Domain Designation

Mid–late 19th century

Ojerinde (died about 1914)
Yoruba
Abeokuta, Nigeria
Coastal West Africa

Egungun, a widespread Yoruba masquerade, is staged to honor the ancestors and the newly deceased, who continue to influence the lives of their kin. Organized at funerals, on family occasions, and during annual or biennial festivals, the different types of egungun are each associated with a distinctive cloth costume, some of which include a wooden mask or headdress. The tufted hairstyle of this example mimics the flap of a hunter’s cap that hides protective medicines.

Status: On View, Gallery 137
Department: Arts of Africa

Culture: Yoruba
Artist: Ojerinde
Title: Headdress (Ago Egungun)
Places: Nigeria (Object made in:), Abeokuta (Object made in:), Africa (Object made in:)
Date: 1850-1899
Medium: Wood and pigment
Dimensions: 29.8 × 24.1 × 20.3 cm (11 3/4 × 9 1/2 × 8 in.)
Credit Line: Edward E. Ayer Endowment in memory of Charles L. Hutchinson
Reference Number: 1969.240
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/31581/manifest.json

Allen Wardwell, “New Acquisitions of African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” African Arts, vol. 4, no. 1 (Autumn, 1970), pp. 17, no. 4 (ill.).
Robert Plant Armstrong, The Powers of Presence: Consciousness, Myth, and Affecting Presence (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), pl. 15.
Moyo Okediji, “Art of the Yoruba,” African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, vol. 23, no.2, (Art Institute of Chicago, 1997), pp. 175.
Sarah Watson Parsons, “Interpreting Projections, Projecting Interpretations: A Reconsideration of the ‘Phallus’ in Esu Iconography,” African Arts, vol. 32, no. 2 (Summer 1999), 36-45, 90-91; 43 (ill.).
Warren M. Robbins and Nancy Ingram Nooter, African Art in American Collections (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), p. 233, no. 597 (ill.).
Babatunde Lawal, “Orilonise: The Hermeneutics of the Head and Hairstyles among the Yoruba,” The World of Tribal Arts (Winter 2001/Spring 2002), pp. 80-98, pp.98 (ill.).
Constantine Petridis et al., Speaking of Objects: African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2020), cat. no. 39, pp. 106-107 (ill.).

John J. Klejman (died 1995), Klejman Gallery, New York, N.Y., by 1969 [acquisition documentation in curatorial file]; sold to the Art Institute, 1969.

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