 Okuyi Mask -The okuyi or mukuyi mask,
originating from the Punu in southwest Gabon, represents and idealized
female face. Indicated by the scarification on the face area,
consisting of nine dots, and according to some, have a sexual
connotation . Another sign of female gender is the coiffure.
The ritual
function fulfilled by these masks is normally at funeral ceremonies,
when they are danced as embodiments of the spirits of the ancestors.
In the masquerade, the dancers, wearing costumes of raffia or cotton
fabric and animal pelts, move with amazing agility on stilts up to six
and a half feet in height.
*African Masks - Iris Hahner-Herzog, Maria Kecskesi and Laszlo Vajda.
 Ikwara Mokulu Mask -These black punu Ikwara masks, which meted out justice, danced only at twilight or at night, on stilts made from musasa, muri-ditenga - 'the tree of the ghosts', which, by all accounts were much shorter than those used by the daytime Okuyi
dancers. Punu (and Galwa, Lumbu or Shira) black masks in museums and
collections are much rarer then the others, perhaps because of their
dangerous and frankly evil nature, which, may have prompted the
villagers to conceal them carefully from European collectors (like all
objects connected in some way with witchcraft) and, when they had been
discovered, to be more reluctant to sell them to travelers than other
more banal items.
*"Visions of Africa: Punu" - Louis Perrois and Charlotte Grand-Dufay ISBN:978-88-7439-401-2
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