At Georgian masquerade parties, participants flaunted their status, taste and wealth through ostentatious and creative dress.
Remnants of polychrome colouring were scrubbed from recovered ancient Greek sculptures and artists created new all-white marble sculptures seen as continuous with an imagined past.
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Western fashion, laundering and style reflected the racialized politics dramatically shaped by profound global transformations bound up with slavery, colonialism and modernization.
A masquerade during the celebration of an Igbo ritual.
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Over the past 15 years there’s been a revival of young people - mostly Christians - participating in traditional masquerades, despite these being branded as pagan.