Sculpture tradition · Mozambique · Tanzania
Makonde art
The Makonde are a people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique and of south-eastern Tanzania, renowned as carvers. Their mapiko helmet masks, worn in masquerade dances, belong to a long tradition; from the 1950s Makonde carvers in Tanzania and Mozambique also created a modern sculpture in dense African blackwood, from the interlaced figures of ujamaa "family trees" to the distorted spirits called shetani. Artists such as George Lilanga and Reinata Sadimba became internationally known.
Updated 3 min read
Mapiko: the masquerade
Among the Makonde of Mozambique, mapiko is a masquerade danced by men wearing a carved wooden helmet mask that covers the head, with a cloth costume hiding the rest of the body. The masks show human faces — often with the facial scarification and lip plugs once worn by Makonde women and men — and sometimes real hair. Traditionally the dancer was presented as a spirit or a being from the dead, and his identity was kept from women and children.
Mapiko has never stood still. During and after Mozambique's war of independence, which ended in 1975, masks representing new characters appeared, and the dance became a space for satire and commentary as well as ritual. It is still performed today.
Modern Makonde sculpture
In the 1950s, Makonde carvers who had moved to Tanzania, and others on the Mozambican side of the Ruvuma River, began to carve sculpture for sale. In Dar es Salaam, dealers encouraged them, and over the following decades they developed several distinct styles, all carved in African blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon, called mpingo in Swahili), a heavy, very hard wood that takes a high polish:
- Binadamu ("human being"): realistic figures of people at work and in daily life.
- Shetani (from the Swahili word for spirit or devil): figures of spirits with distorted, twisted, often humorous or frightening bodies — one-legged, many-eyed, impossibly bent.
- Ujamaa ("familyhood"): tall columns of interlocking figures, carved from a single trunk, climbing over and supporting each other — often called "trees of life" or "family trees". The name echoes the ujamaa socialism of Tanzania's first president, Julius Nyerere.
Artists
George Lilanga (1934–2005), a Tanzanian of Makonde origin, became one of East Africa's best-known artists. Starting as a carver of shetani, he developed a joyful style of painting and sculpture in which crowds of long-eared, dancing figures fill the surface, and his work was shown internationally.
Reinata Sadimba, born in northern Mozambique in the 1940s, is unusual as a woman in a carving tradition dominated by men. Her clay and wood figures, often of women, mothers and fantastical beings, are held in collections in Mozambique and abroad.
The wood
Mpingo grows slowly, and decades of demand for carvings and for musical instruments — it is the traditional wood for clarinets and oboes — have put pressure on the forests where it grows. Conservation groups in Tanzania work with communities to manage it sustainably. Mpingo is Tanzania's national tree.
Buying Makonde carvings
The market is full of carvings, from masterpieces to mass-produced souvenirs. Some "ebony" pieces are softer wood blackened with dye or shoe polish: genuine blackwood is very heavy, and freshly cut surfaces show a dark heartwood rather than pale wood beneath a coating. Older masks need documented provenance. See how to buy African art.
Related
Mapiko belongs to the wider world of African masks. In Dar es Salaam, Makonde carving grew up beside Tingatinga painting. For Mozambique's best-known painter, see Malangatana, and for another modern sculpture movement in the region, Zimbabwe's stone sculpture.
