Spirit of the Raven

A mask called the Spirit of the Raven, made by an artist belonging to the Yupik people in Bethel, Western Alaska in 1989. In the Yupik mythology, the raven is the spirit of creation and a culture hero who also created humans. A story was associated with masks used at ceremonies and dances, and the masks were sometimes destroyed after the ritual. Due to the impact of Christian missionary work, the tradition started to die down in the 1890s, but it has begun to recover in the past decades. This mask represents contemporary art.

The raven is portrayed both as a bird and as a spirit with a human face, and thus it sees through both animal and spirit eyes. The closed eye of the spirit is marked with a black line, and its face is decorated with white dots that represent the traditional way of Yupik men to decorate the corners of their mouths with piercings. The spirit of the raven does not have hands here as usual, but wings. The mask also includes the sun, which refers to the story of how, at the beginning of the world, the raven freed the sun from the man who had captured it and then set it in the sky to shine for everyone.

The mask was held in place while dancing by biting on the wooden sticks behind it.

Artist Alexie Isaac, 1989. Bethel, Alaska. VK6478:53. Photo: Rauno Träskelin, 2014.