Embodying the Mask

Critical text

Embodying the Mask was born from my residency in Riyadh. where I worked on the figure of the "flower man" of the Qattan tribe and on the bas-reliefs of the ancient AlUla temples. Mutilated, decapitated faces, erased by religious dogma. I wanted to give them back.

I built ceramic masks and brought them into action, together with the local people. Every mask is a domestic idol: you take it, you wear it, you become other. The habitual face disappears, and with it the declared identity. The body remains. free to be any of the things it could be.

Embodying the Mask is my proposal: the face is not a prison. The mask is the oldest thing we have to get out of it. Not a disguise: a consecration.