Three Plank Masks, Buffalo Mask, and Serpent Mask Performing in the Town Of Dossi

Burkina Faso. Bwa, 1984. Wood, pigments, and raffia fiber. Plank masks height 7′ (2.13 m); serpent mask height over 14′ (4.3 m).

Bwa people initiate both men and women by having them perform a public masquerade ceremony.
Men wear masks and women sing songs to accompany them. Each mask is commissioned and maintained by family groups and represents abstracted forms of people, animals, and insects.

Photography and painting were imported from Europe and utilized by Africans to reclaim their own image from colonial gaze.

Found object works traced to a different origin than the European readymade; they became a widely used and influential art practice.
Seydou Keïta became a renowned portraitist, sitting his subjects as prosperous and urban.  He captured people as they were as well as how they wished to be, a far cry from the Europeans' depictions of naked "savages."