A Mask is a Document

This post is part of the series "Nemboro. The Power of Fictions", where I explore how a set of so-called "nemboro" woven masks I encountered in Panama —marketed as ritual artifacts from the Embera Indigenous people— led me from enchantment to rupture, and from personal encounter to broader questions about metadata, ontology, and the ethics of classification. Each installment stands on its own, but together they trace a progression: from the seduction of objects to the recognition that even fictions —especially fictions— shape knowledge systems. Check all the posts in this section's index.

In the previous post, I described my first encounter with the Embera woven masks —the nemboro— hanging on a gallery wall in Panama City's Old Town. Three hundred woven faces stared back at me, carrying stories of ritual, protection, and transformation. That encounter stayed with me. When I returned to them, I could no longer see them as mere crafts for sale. They felt like something else entirely: documents.

At the gallery, the "masks" were sold in what I supposed to be their normal sizes —large enough to cover a human face, or even larger— as well as in medium and smaller versions. Aside from a couple of long strips that serve as support structures, made either from vegetal materials (generally naguala palm, Carludovica palmata) or wire, the entire piece is meticulously woven from short, stiff threads using a variety of patterns. Those fibers were extracted from the youngest leaves of a palm known locally as chunga, macora, or guérregue (Astrocaryum standleyanum), found from southern Costa Rica to northwestern Ecuador, and traditionally used for baskets and household objects.

I was told that those producing these pieces in the Embera communities of Panama —mostly located in the Comarca Embera-Wounaan, in the Darién region near the Colombian border— were women. They had seemingly managed to preserve and recover traditional structures, techniques, and patterns, even continuing the ancient processes of dyeing fibers with natural pigments. However, those artisans had also innovated — incorporating vivid aniline dyes into their work, as well as unusual cutting, weaving, and braiding patterns that updated the "masks" of earlier times.

Nemboro were no longer used in the rituals of the jaibana, who could be either men or women. For some time, those characters had seen their role diminished within Indigenous societies, where influences such as evangelical Christianity had a deep impact. As a result, since the "masks" were no longer widely used in healing ceremonies, they could be sold without concern. Apparently, there were no taboos prohibiting their trade — and, more importantly, no maleficent beings would come seeking revenge for the false faces that once defied them. In fact, as I stood there again, in Panama's Old Town, confronted by dry gazes, beaks, open mouths, and curved or angular silhouettes, I sensed no "bad energy" at all.

But they did carry meanings, knowledge, and memory. That, I could feel.

I felt an entire universe hanging on that wall in front of me. It held the worldview of a people — the knowledge of generations of artisans and jaibana who collaborated to devise the most effective ways to ward off dark souls by using the resources provided by the forest. Crests, fangs, and more and more empty eyes watched me from the depths of time.

While standing right there, I thought that those nemboro might be considered authentic documents — vessels for transmitting specific kinds of information. That is, if we adopt the broader concept of "document" now common in museums and in contemporary currents of information science.

Those were not just crafted objects — they were information items that demanded to be read through the lens of document theory. As Suzanne Briet famously wrote, a document is any physical or symbolic sign, preserved or recorded, intended to represent, to reconstruct, or to demonstrate a physical or conceptual phenomenon. The "masks" spoke in threads and textures, not ink. But they still spoke.

And they talked about specific materials (fibers, frames, dyes, ornaments), about the strategies used to gather and apply them, and about the local ecologies and biologies they were drawn from; about construction techniques, with their many variations across time and territory; about the spiritual meanings of colors and shapes, and the symbolism embedded in their iconographies; about the figures they represented — and about the many healings they once witnessed, successful or not, which were in essence battles against forces of darkness. Ultimately, each mask represented the convergence of all those elements: a node, or a knot, in the intricate weaving of Embera traditional knowledge and memory.

Those nemboro spoke of territories and people, and of the benign and malignant spiritual entities that inhabited their world. And they did so solely through their silhouettes, volumes, textures, and shades. Those features, incidentally, rendered them aesthetically striking — and thus, materially valuable.

And, therefore, very marketable.

(Documents —especially Indigenous or semi-commodified ones— exist within power structures. Their legibility, circulation, and value are shaped by the systems that catalog, sell, or display them — systems that often privilege aesthetics over provenance, and visibility over context.)

On my second visit to the gallery, I decided to buy one of the smallest "masks" among those on display. The larger ones felt too imposing. I preferred one that didn't invade my space but kept me company. One that might allow me to linger on its details: the repetitive interweaving of fibers forming a pattern, the color that deepened here and faded there...

And one that might tell me a story. Its story.

Its potential story, for example: what might have happened if it had once been worn by a jaibana in some corner of the ancient Darién forest, to fend off the nauseating claws of a mythical beast, or the dark influences of a particular shadow.

But also its real story. The story of the many women who harvested the chunga leaves, painstakingly extracted the fibers, dyed them, skillfully wove them, and imagined this or that form, detail, or structure... Or the story of those who walked for kilometers to sell their creations, striving to earn a few coins to survive — or those forced to undersell their work, or deceived by unscrupulous intermediaries... Stories of resilience and exploitation, of shifting identities, and of loss and oblivion.

I opted for one without bright aniline colors — one displaying dark brown, cream, and beige tones. It was shaped like a feline. Or was it? I was not entirely sure; it might be a deer. As soon as I held it in my hands, I instinctively began to classify it. After all, wasn't it a document? And wasn't I a librarian?

And I realized how unaccustomed we were in my profession to classifying anything beyond paper-based materials — and how many possibilities opened up as I contemplated this knowledge-turned-"mask," held timidly between my fingers.

That moment —mask in hand, librarian's gaze awakened— was my first rupture. I saw how classification could stretch far beyond paper, how every thread and color could become metadata. But I also sensed that to treat these objects as documents meant asking what kinds of worlds our descriptions bring into being. That question would open a door into the seductive, and sometimes dangerous, realm of metadata fictions.