Artist masks, guises and constructed worlds
Libby Bove, Holland Otik, Dik Downey, Noah Sharp, Buoys Buoys Buoys, David Snoo Wilson
Across many cultures, the mask is used as a tool for change. To wear a mask is to step into another role, another presence, or another way of being. The mask allows the wearer to become something else, not only in appearance, but in movement, voice, and behaviour.
A mask can act as a form of protection, creating distance between the wearer and the world. At the same time, it allows the wearer to act without being recognised. In European carnival traditions, for example, masks were used to temporarily reverse social roles. The hidden face made it possible for people to speak and behave in ways that would normally be forbidden. The mask created a space where different rules applied.
Anthropologist Elizabeth Tonkin, describes masks not simply as objects, but as active agents. She argues that a mask does not only represent something, it helps to bring a different identity into being. The mask works through performance. It is completed by the body that wears it and by the social setting in which it appears. Meaning is created through use, not just through form.
In this exhibition, artists use masks as tools for world-building. The works move between sculpture and performance, object and action. These masks are not only to be looked at. They suggest other realms, other identities, and other ways of moving through space. Through masking, the artist and the wearer can step outside ordinary identity and enter a space where transformation is possible.
Here, the mask becomes a threshold: between self and other, seen and unseen, everyday and extraordinary.
www.davidsnoowilson.com/masked
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