updated: 04/03/2007
For her final prosthetic makeup project at the Nordic Institute of Stage and Studio (NISS), Steinuum Bachmann Josteinsdottir transformed fellow-student Nina, a blue-eyed blonde, into a Musi tribeswoman. The transformation is astounding and, as you can see from the two reference photos of Mursi women, is based on careful research.
I first saw this makeup when it was entered in the character makeup contest run by Makeup Artist Magazine on its Message Board; I emailed Steinunn and asked if I could include it in themakeupgallery – I’m pleased she’s agreed and let me use images both of the completed makeup and of the makeup application.
The Mursi are a Sub-Saharan African nomadic cattle-herding tribe from an isolated region of southwestern Ethiopia close to the Sudanese border. The Mursi women are famous of wearing plates in their lower lips – though photographs indicate that, in fact, either lip may be pierced. This practice is supposed to have originated as a means of detering slave-traders; as the lips are not pierced until girls are aged fifteen or sixteen this seems unlikely. The lip discs are made of clay and, yes, they are removed for eating.