Making History: The Modernity of Masquerade in Ikole Ekiti

Making History: The Modernity of Masquerade in Ikole Ekiti

Making History The Modernity of Masquerade in Ikole Ekiti Will Rea all photos bY the author T he penetration and persistence of cultural and artistic forms into a present defined as “the modern” or “modernity” is an apparent and growing theme of many African art historical studies and has been well represented in the pages of this journal for some time. Apart from the obvious and still deeply unresolved issues that surround attempts by an African art historical establishment to institute a correct nomenclature for those artists from the continent working within the contemporary global art world, there is another stream of evidence and analysis. It is one that has found an opening in the continued persistence of what seem to be age-old traditions, a persistence, however, that has been reintegrated into the forms and structures of modernity, particularly that modernity associated with the postcolonial state. That many of these rich and detailed papers seem to evidence a surprise (and welcome joy) that these traditions have persisted in the face of a globalized modernity may offer an insight into the way in which the disciplinary foundations of African art history constituted the study of African art. The contrast is between those papers that assumed and wrote the production and performance of African art forms as a form of the ethnographic present, and those that are at pains to demonstrate the present use and forms of cultures reified and produced for audiences and patrons in the present. Yet there remain a set of underlying assumptions associated with this form of work. That these events are staged suggests a sense of “the traditional” rather than of being one more attribute of (a) tradition’s ability to encompass change—a reading that itself encourages the spurious contrast between that which is authentic and that which is not. The second element encouraged by these readings is the...