BAGA European taste for African art. Picasso’s fascination for the powerful geometric volumes of dimba shoulder masks is well known, and their influence is apparent in the plaster heads of Marie-Thérèse that the master produced. The Baga aesthetic is now considered classical, and majestic Baga creations are displayed prominently in major museums. The serpent crest from the neighboring Nalu group at the Pavillon des Sessions in the Louvre is one example, and Baga works are well received when they are offered at auction. One serpent, sold by Christie’s on December 11, 2012, reached a price of 313,000 euros. The forms of these objects seduce more than they surprise nowadays, and the helmet masks, the altar masks, and the serpent masks, among other pieces in the Geneva exhibition, are largely familiar, yet they are rooted in a highly complex cultural reality that paradoxically remains very poorly understood. The term Baga, for example, does not designate a homogeneous people but rather refers to seven distinct groups: the Baga Kalum, the Baga Koba, the Baga Kakisa, the Bulongic, the Pokur, the Baga Sitem, and the Baga Mandori. These groups are established along the Guinean seaboard from the Conakry Peninsula to Rio Componi and have specific languages, institutions, rituals, and attendant material cultures. However, they share a common history and various of their characteristics also are found among other coastal peoples of the area, including the Nalu and the Landuma. All of these groups are mangrove swamp rice cultivators and all of them have masking societies through which male youths are initiated. Early European voyagers erroneously lumped these societies together under the pan-Baga name Simo. These various Baga groups remain attached to their traditions. As Berliner points out in his Baga Religious Memories, which accompanies the exhibition, they still perceive themselves as fetish worshippers, palm wine drinkers, and carvers of masks and sculptures, much as past European chroniclers described them to be. In actuality, the cultural practices—and particularly religious ones—of many Baga subgroups have undergone considerable changes over the last century due to the inroads of Christianity and, especially, Islam, and due to the phenomenon of “Susuization,” which refers to the influence of the Susu people, of Mandinka origin, who are now the majority population in the area. This influence was heavily encouraged by Ahmed Sekou Touré, who became the first president of the Republic of Guinea in 1958, in the hopes that it would result in better integration of ethnic groups. Most customary traditions had disappeared from the northern Baga area by the end 69
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