Egun Pasoda ("turning around cloth") costumes are used to enact a complete transformation. Whirling patchwork cloth around them, and parading with legs stepping high, the masqueraders are playful and agile. As the drums accelerate, they bend forward, and peel their backs off, tuck them under their legs and eventually turn completely inside out, revealing another entire costume. Masterful performers enact this transformation right before the spectators' eyes without exposing their human form beneath, and thereby confirm that beings from beyond human limits are present.
Appliqued broadcloth, crocheted cotton, beads, and cowry shells
118 × 61 in. (299.7 × 154.9cm)
General Acquisition Fund
2001.33
Not currently on view
Resources
Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back, Feb. 7 - May 19, 2002 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Oct. 2, 2004 - Jan. 2, 2005; Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum, Feb. 12 - June 19, 2005; Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Oct. 8, 2005 - Jan. 1, 2006; Nashville, Tennessee, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Jan. 27 - Apr. 30, 2006 [as African Art, African Voices: Long Steps Never Broke a Back]).
Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.
