CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Yup'ik Art
Art of the Yup'ik of south-western Alaska: ceremonial masks with hoops and feathers, carved ivory, skin clothing and grass basketry.
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About
The Yup'ik live in south-western Alaska, around the Yukon and Kuskokwim deltas, and their best-known art is the mask. Masks were made for winter ceremonies, such as the Bladder Festival, which returned the souls of seals to the sea so that the animals would come back to hunters. Carvers, often working from a shaman's vision, built them from driftwood and attached hoops, feathers, carved hands and small animals. Hands pierced with holes let game pass through to the people, and a face may appear inside an animal, showing the person within the creature. Many masks were meant for a single ceremony and then discarded.
Missionaries suppressed masked dancing in the early 20th century, but carvers and dancers revived it in the late 20th century. Yup'ik makers also engrave ivory, sew skin parkas and coil grass baskets. In the 1940s Surrealists in New York, including André Breton, collected Yup'ik masks.
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