The Dancer (Agbogho Mmuo – Maiden Spirit Mask)

Dance was an important theme in Enwonwu's work, which he explored as an element of black culture, capturing the drama and beauty of figures in motion, personifying the essence of dance. This painting shows one of the Agbogho Mmuo, or Maiden Spirits, characters of the Nigerian masquerade, which Enwonwu first employed in the 1950s following his reading of Geoffrey Gorer’s colonial critique, Africa Dances (1935). The performance is put on in honour of unwed adolescent girls and ancestors from the community, and is danced exclusively by men dressed in vivid, colourful costumes with props including elaborate feathered headdresses and painted wooden masks. The delicate features drawn in the white paint represent the purity and innocence of the maidens’ souls. A review of the artist’s Exhibition Center show in Lagos, Nigeria in September 1962 noted ‘some excellent new paintings, particularly the ones of the Ibo masquerades called Agbogommuo [sic]’. The series took on new meaning in the aftermath of the Civil War (1967-70), when the artist, himself of Igbo heritage, identified strongly with the Igbo people and their attempts to embed themselves and their culture into the reunited Nigeria.