Worrying The Mask: The Politics of Authenticity and Contemporaneity 
in the Worlds of African Art

Overview

In this seminal performance-lecture-film, artist Zina Saro-Wiwa navigates the moral, philosophical and cultural conundrums that arise from the very existence of contemporary traditional African art. A large part of Saro-Wiwa’s artistic practice explores the masquerade traditions of Ogoniland, her ancestral ethnic group from the Niger Delta. Yet Saro-Wiwa’s hybrid identity has forced her to consider how African masks live concurrently in the West and in present-day Africa and how these African art worlds impact one another especially at a moment when restitution is being demanded. In Worrying the Mask, Saro-Wiwa challenges the call for the restitution of African art by privileging storytelling over geographical location.