Sight Lines: MAKING FACES

Visitors to the University Museum last fall semester were greeted by this stunning body-sized mask from Papua New Guinea. Used in ceremonial dances by the agricultural Kilenge people, the "Mud Man," as the mask is dubbed, is made of woven bamboo, grass, and wood finished off with mud, paint, and human hair. It was crafted about a century ago.

The Mud Man was just the opening of "Behind the Masks," the museum's largest and most popular exhibit in its history. Michael Hernandez, a doctoral student in cultural anthropology with a particular interest in masks and mask-making, curated the exhibit, which accompanied an international conference at SIUC on the use of masks in art, culture, and history. Hernandez recruited a team of graduate and undergraduate students to assist with research and construction.

The masks, which ranged from the artistic to the practical and the traditional to the contemporary, were made for purposes as varied as cultural rituals, theater performances, art exhibits, psychotherapy, sports, and surgery. They came from the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

—by Marilyn Davis