The Casamance cultural repertoire is not restricted to the performances discussed so far but also encompasses cultural forms commonly understood as popular culture. High culture – to use a controversial term to denote the cultural expressions usually associated with it, without suggesting a hierarchy – is far less disseminated. Yet in some middle-class interiors, one may find modern paintings, some of them made by Casamance artists. Although they cater to an audience consisting of the local middle class, the expatriate community and tourists, these artists are inspired by local traditions. In their representations of traditional culture, the artists focus on masquerades and initiation rites. In fact, they represent the secretive performances discussed in the previous chapters. This presents us with a conundrum. How can these performances of secrecy be represented in art? Why does their representation in art not amount to desecration? As paintings are forms of visual communication, one wonders why these representations are not equivalent to the disclosure of secrets? Judging from the favourable reception of these works of art, I would say that they are not. Why not? Taussig gives us a clue: ‘It is the task and life force of the public secret to maintain that verge where the secret is not destroyed through exposure, but subject to a quite different sort of revelation that does justice to it’ (Taussig 1999: 3). So how do these works of art do justice to the secret?