Tapa mask "tadak"
Description
barkcloth from breadfruit fibre, stretched over a framework comprised of pieces of strips of cane or bamboo, eyebrows, nose and mouth made of strips of wood, eyes painted, good condition, base;
“tadak” masks represent bush spirits. Garments of breadfruit fibre and leaves worn with the mask reinforced their spirit identity. They performed at a mortuary festival termed “wamoh”, the “feast for forgetting the dead”. They appeared suddenly among people who were planting the gardens for the final feasts in the mortuary cycle. Not only was their presence ritually “unexpected”, the mask wearers shot arrows at the garden workers. They were intended to have a comic effect yet were threatening. The reason for the “surprise raids” is that they stimulated people to work harder and also shot away any malicious magic worked by enemies of the feast givers. Once the garden planting had been completed, the masks were thrown into the sea, a proces called “waldudur”, the term applied to the burial of people at sea.