Death mask, representing a recently deceased person

Mask
The mask is a simple shape: cut from a single piece with three holes, and eyebrows drawn with black soot. The two horns indicate that the person personified by the mask only recently died. The horns don’t indicate an animal: before Europeans arrived, none of the animals on New Guinea had horns. The man wearing the mask wore very little else. Just an apron made of fibres and white paint over his torso.

Hais
The Marind feel awkward and even afraid in the presence of a hais. They prefer to stay out of its way. A hais is only recently dead and is therefore on its way to becoming a spirit. The spirits of the dead leave the body - some say through the navel, others as a flash of light through the mouth. The final shape of a spirit is a skeleton which is physically, though invisibly present in the world of the dead, a place beyond the horizon. Before the Europeans came, the Marind believed that place was somewhere near the River Digul. When the Europeans came, they realised the world must be bigger and so they assumed that the dead must be on one of the Indonesian islands. And yet spirits may still return to the place where they lived when they were people.

Haarlem
This mask has long been part of the Tropenmuseum collection. In 1909, it was given to Colonial Museum in Haarlem (predecessor of today’s Tropenmuseum) by the Dutch Colonial Ministry.

circa 65cm (25 9/16in.)

Source: collectie.tropenmuseum.nl