Why do you think this funeral figure is grinning?

This mask is hand carved wood with a bark cloth hood, decorated with paint in shades of brown and green and showing the head of a jaguar. It is funeral mask, and represents an animal that the deceased man may hunt in the afterlife. During the funeral ceremony, dancers (all men) wear masks like this one. The bark cloth hood usually goes over the top of a dancer’s head and the mask rests on his forehead so that he can see through the porous cloth or through the eyes of the carving.

The mask is in the style of the Ticuna Indians, who live in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest near the borders of Peru and Columbia. Despite many threats to their culture and way of life, and indeed lives, they have retained a distinct cultural identity, shown particularly in their artwork. Their crafts include basketry, wood and stone sculpture and mask making. They also make bark canvas from a species of fig tree called tiruri, which is then painted with vegetable dyes. It is know as tururi painting and is done by men, and the style of these paintings, and the masks, are similar.