Punu Wood Mask, Gabon, Based

White-faced, red-lipped, and wearing a coiffure that took somebody real patience.

This mask, mounted on a base, is Punu work from Gabon, Central Africa, 20th century, in carved and painted wood. The Punu are known for white-faced masks associated with the spirits of the dead and with an idealized female beauty, danced by masked performers, often on stilts, at community events and funerals. Here the pale face has slit eyes under thin arched brows, and pursed lips of deep red. A small lattice of raised bumps marks the forehead. A sweeping, ribbed black coiffure rises above. Seventeen and a half inches high.

She has plainly seen stranger things than you.