Invitation as Intervention: Hervé Youmbi's Bamiléké-Dogon Ku'ngang Mask and the Stanley Museum of Art

Abstract: The Stanley Museum of Art acquired recently Hervé Youmbi's Bamiléké-Dogon Ku'ngang Mask VI, 2019–2022, to highlight the contemporary relevance of masquerade in Africa, and to critique the ways in which African ritual objects function in an American art museum context. Created as a commodity for the global artworld and for ritual performance by members of the Ku'Ngang Society in Cameroon, Youmbi's work blurs and defies conventional museological and ritual practices. Through an invitation to circulate the work regularly between an American art museum and African community of origin, Youmbi's mask becomes an intervention into the troubled legacies of their separation.