Masquerade in the Cross River Region

11 September - 21 December 2018

This exhibition celebrates the imminent gift of the Nicklin-Salmons Collection of Ethnography to the University of Birmingham.  Keith Nicklin was an anthropologist and curator, who conducted fieldwork primarily in the Cross River region of Nigeria and Cameroon.  Jill Salmons is an art historian and researcher who has specialised in the Cross River region and masquerade since the 1970s.  The exhibition features stunning photographs taken during Nicklin’s fieldwork in Nigeria in the 1970s which vividly bring to life masquerade, mask art forms and the production of masks.

Whilst conducting fieldwork in the Cross River region, Nicklin became interested in an art form unique to the area: skin-covered masks. This practice was suffering a decline in the 1970s, due to a reduction in the performance of masquerade and difficulties in long-term preservation of the masks.  Nicklin and Salmons began to work with artists to revive the art form and recreate some of these ‘at risk’ artefacts, for museum collections and the local community.  Nicklin called this process the ‘Ethnographic Retrieval Method’. 

The wider collection includes artefacts collected by Keith Nicklin and Jill Salmons during extensive fieldwork in the Cross River region and beyond.  The skin-covered masks form the heart of the Nicklin-Salmons Collection which will come to Birmingham in full in 2019.