Meteni celebration.
Illustrations.
It was a great honor to illustrate a series of characters for the Meteni celebration in Riga! This year, the team behind the main event chose to highlight three of the traditional yet mostly forgotten and unseen masks worn by our ancestors.
First and probably the best-known is the spirit of fertility and male energy—recognizable by its hidden face, rye-straw hat, and wolf-fur coat.
Next comes the loud and cheerful, red-cheeked Gypsy lady, usually with bright makeup applied. A role traditionally taken by the village’s best singers—the true soul and center of the party.
And finally, the dancing female figure with a birch-bark headscarf and a noisy bell at her waist, whose job is to scare away evil spirits by wild dancing!
A little peek at how these traditional characters found their way from history into today’s streets.
