"A sleeping mask radiates a force that traverses space—both here and in the land where an artist created the mask—pulling time back to a moment before departure to elsewhere. In that other place and ancient time, spirits boarded the masks and traveled to distant lands of exile. The power embedded in the mask remains, regardless of the land it reaches."
Gilles Bibeau, anthropologist
The Body in Ritual The Body in Ritual
Masks, Objects of ReconciliationMasks, Objects of Reconciliation
Dialogic Moderator: Professor Norman Cornett
Speakers:
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Gilles Bibeau, anthropologist
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Guy Mushagalusa Chigoho, Director of the Afromusée
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Claude Gauthier, photographer
Presented at Centre Afrika Centre Africa
1644 Rue St-Hubert, Montreal
February 12, 2026, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
From the collection "Les Porteurs de Masques," the photographic series "The Body in Ritual"The Body in Ritual explores the transformation of the body as it becomes a vehicle of the sacred. Through gesture, posture, and presence, the wearer does not merely carry the object: they animate it, awaken it, and infuse it with profound creative energy.
This lecture offers a reflection on how the mask and body resonate together, drawing from intimate memory, personal history, and traces of the past to reveal a transfigured identity. The ritual becomes a liminal space: between the individual and the collective, between the inert object and living presence, between memory and creation.
Using photographs from the collection as a reference, the discussion will address the notions of ritual, transmission, symbolic gesture, and the expressive power of the body, showing how contemporary art can reactivate ancestral forms to question our relationship with identity and the sacred.
