Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology

Affordable Antiques: From Noh Theatre Masks to Textile Sample Books

A week ago we started looking at the power of masks and yesterday we focused on an art event in Japan. Let's combine the two things as the starting point for this new post. If you like Japanese masks and you would like to start a collection (or are just on the lookout for unusual inspirations or for an accessory for a runway show...), you should indeed check out Tatami Antiques' site.

As you may remember from a previous post, Tatami Antiques is an independent online marketplace for Japanese antiquities and one of their dealers, Hotoke, often puts online unique masks.

In the past Hotoke has sold a very detailed Onna-men, a Noh mask of a woman, and a Yoroboshi mask from the Showa period, that is a Noh wood carving mask for a young blind boy frequenting the temple of Tennouji begging for alms characterised by an expression of intense grief and spiritual deliverance. 

At the moment Hotoke has got a Kushiinadahime, or Japanese Kagura wood carving mask, that is a Noh mask of "Ko-Omote", used for a local kagura dance in the Okayama prefecture called "Bicchu Kagura" ($150, enquiries here) and two Japanese folk wood carving hannya masks, one in colour and another one in plain wood, both for kagura theatrical performances and both portraying the soul of a woman who has became a demon due to obsession or jealousy ($200 and $280; enquiries here and here).

The peculiarity of these masks is that the wearers has to grip the wooden piece attached to the interior of the mask between their teeth to hold the mask in place. 

If you're looking instead for fashion-related antiquities, check out the early 20th century sample books of coloured silk textiles or kimonos from Kyoto-based fabric dealers.

Often sold at less than $200, these unique compositions of fabrics are an absolute bargain and they can provide intriguing inspirations for prints and colour palettes. 

Musical Gardens of Peace: "Soundscape Image Generation" by evala (See by Your Ears) and Akio Suzuki @ Nakazu Banshou-en, Marugame City

We live in politically, socially and financially uncertain and complicated times, so it is easy to feel stressed, overwhelmed by what we see on the news or by what goes on in our countries. It is difficult to find our peace of mind if we are consumed by modern anxieties, but, luckily, there are artists out there working on projects that may contribute to restore our collective spiritual balance.

Cutting-edge sound artist evala and international sound art pioneer Akio Suzuki are for example currently working on an experimental project entitled "Soundscape Image Generation", revolving around nature and sounds, opening in a month's time in Japan.

Born in 1976 and based in Tokyo evala (See by Your Ears), is a musician and sound artist known for his experimental electronic music and spatial compositions in which sound behaves dynamically, as if it were a living entity. 

Three years ago he launched the project "See by Your Ears", which uses stereophonic systems as a new instrument to create novel audiovisual experiences; he then developed a sound installation meant to be experienced individually inside a dark anechoic chamber that brings about the new audiovisual sensation of "seeing by your ears" and an audio vessel where visitors take a journey through space and time using sound from 576 speakers built around Sony's Sonic Surf VR technology.  

Born in 1941 in Pyongyang, Akio Suzuki created in 1963 the event "Throwing Objects Down a Staircase" at Nagoya Station that literally consisted in throwing a bucket of objects down the stairwell of the Nagoya train station, and then started developing explorations of natural sounds, turning listening into his artistic practice. In 1988 he performed his piece "Space in the Sun", which involved purifying his ears for twenty-four hours in nature on the meridian line that runs through Amino, Kyoto.

Coinciding with the Setouchi Triennale and the Okayama Art Summit 2019, "Soundscape Image Generation" (27th September to 24th November) will be located in Nakazu Banshou-en, a traditional Japanese garden with over 330 years of history in Marugame City, Kagawa Prefecture.

Built in 1688 by Kyogoku Takatoyo this circuit-style daimyo garden features 1,500 wakamatsu pine tress and a pond with eight islands made to resemble the "eight views" found in Lake Biwa in Omi, the ancestral home of the Kyogoku Family.

With a name - "Banshou-en" - that refers to all of nature or rather to the entirety of the universe, the garden is also linked to the Marugame Art Museum, built in the style of a flat-building tea ceremony arbor, and to the restaurant Kaifutei, with a view of the garden.

Using the latest technologies in sound art and with the help of computer generation software, evala developed for the garden a new work in his "Anechoic Sphere" series that will set place in the oldest tea ceremony house in Japan, dating back to the days of the Edo Period. Sounds that evala recorded from around the park and the Setouchi Island Sea fills the small tea room and gradually transforms and leads listeners to a new dimension. evala will also place speakers around the park as an outdoor sound installation that creates a mysterious world of sound.

Akio Suzuki's "Otodate" will be featured at several locations in the gardens of Nakazu Banshou-en. This hands-on piece has viewers follow the footprint-like ear markings drawn on the ground throughout the park that, when stood upon, allow listeners to hear different sounds. By standing upon the "Otodate" as they find them while enjoying the garden, visitors can hone their senses of sight and hearing, thus creating scenery that is all their own.

The most intriguing thing about these project is not just the fact that they will help visitors getting spiritually in touch with nature, offering them an environment where they can meditate surrounded by enveloping soundscapes, but the news that some of these installations may be able to inspire further projects about nature and sound.   

The sound system developed by evala for this project for example could be used for future nature parks and public facilities, so it can serve as pioneering example of how to employ cultural heritage sites to meld the environment with contemporary art for society to enjoy.

Image credits for this post

All images by Kenshu Shintsubo 

The Community Against Gentrification: "Aquí vive gente: Museum of History and Community of Puerta de Tierra" @ Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York

In an architecture-related exhibition it is not so common to find garments or accessories. But "Aquí vive gente: Museum of History and Community of Puerta de Tierra" (MHC PDT), an event hosted at Storefront for Art and Architecture's gallery space (97 Kenmare Street, New York, until 7th September 2019) is not just an exhibition about architecture.

The event focuses indeed on public spaces and on its inhabitants and it is a celebration of the neighborhood of Puerta de Tierra in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Here murals with the refrain "Aquí vive gente" (people live here) remind passersby of the local community's self-determination to look over the future development of its neighborhood.

The temporary museum at Storefront for Art and Architecture is the physical embodiment of an idea that was in the minds and in the living rooms of community members and the result of years of work by Brigada Puerta de Tierra (BPDT), a multigenerational group of artists and activists. 

The group was founded in 2015 when a few residents of Puerta de Tierra and Viejo San Juan joined in protest against the controversial Paseo Puerta de Tierra project for the lack of citizen inclusion and involvement in the design and planning process and for the environmental and cultural damages caused on the north coast of San Juan.

The group grew also thanks to help from local children and young people from the neighborhood that started creating murals and engaging in other activities in response to the Paseo Puerta de Tierra project.

Their focus became reactivating abandoned areas and preserving the neighborhood's rich and complex histories and living culture under the slogan "aquí vive gente" and using art and storytelling as their main tools to educate people. 

Members of the group have cleaned, maintained, and transformed abandoned sites in Puerta de Tierra through creative initiatives such as mural-making, gardening, and other outdoor programs that bring neighbors together.

Storefront offered the group a space where their narratives are told to local visitors and tourists: stories from the neighbourhood are narrated in the gallery via photographs of collective events such as the feast of the Holy Cross, videos, informative panels, but also personal objects that represent people and identities.

A pair of stilettos next to a photograph of Lisa M remind for example visitors that she is the first female rap artist to debut in Latin America, but there's more to discover behind a straw hat, hinting at the late salsa music pioneer Joe Quijano, band leader of Conjunto Cachana, raised in Puerta de Tierra, or a basket ball, symbol of Puerto Rican basketball legend Jenaro "Tuto" Marchand, who passed away in 2017, and who came from the neighborhood of Puerta de Tierra, serving as an inspiration to the community and to its emerging athletes.     

Among the future of the Brigada Puerta de Tierra there's the renovation of Edificio Infanzón, a historic building in Puerta de Tierra that has been abandoned for decades that people hope to turn into a permanent museum where they can preserve the history of locals and inspire further generations of artists, athletes, and musicians from the neighborhood through creative programs.

In the meantime, the closing of the exhibition at Storefront will be marked by a day-long  program of events entitled "Todos juntos "(Everyone Together) that comprises, among the other activities, an exhibition tour by Margarita Ramos, a member of Brigada Puerta de Tierra and the artist of the mobile murals on the walls of the gallery space, and a basketball game between a team of young players from Puerta de Tierra, San Juan, and a local team from the Lower East Side. 

And if you're looking for a unique design piece inspired by the exhibition that you can purchase from the gallery or online (contacting [email protected]), check out the model-scale ceramic houses of the "Extensión familiar" (Family Extension) series by Javier Bosques.

Created from memory and made in collaboration with the artist's mother Elba Meléndez, the houses are a homage to single-family housing, a common sight in the Puerto Rican landscape. These unfinished constructions with cinder blocks stacked over the roof signalling aspirations to expand and grow are usually build little by little, and their construction process often ends up being very slow for lack of funds.

The houses are conceived as social symbols, posing visitors to "Aquí­ vive gente" questions about the gentrification of neighborhoods, identity, history and culture and the power of the collective spirit. Talking about the power of the collective, you can support BPDT further by signing the petition for the Museum of History and Community of Puerta de Tierra here. 

Image credits for this post

1 -10. Aquí vive gente: Museum of History and Community of Puerta de Tierra by Brigada Puerta de Tierra. Storefront for Art and Architecture, 2019. Photographs by David "Dee" Delgado.

11 - 14. Extensión familiar (Family Extension) series by Javier Bosques and Elba Meléndez. Courtesy of the artists.

Humanity According to Artificial Intelligence: "Training Humans" @ Osservatorio Fondazione Prada, Milan

We often hear about Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs and the possibilities that AI can offer to fields such as fashion and art. We have come a long way since the early beginnings of AI and machine learning and, while some companies that have been widely experimenting with AI claim it can provide great experiences, we also know that everything is fluid when it comes to new technologies and innovative advancements in other fields may lead to even more intriguing applications. That said, there is also something scary about AI.

Take for example the exhibition that will soon be opening at Milan's Osservatorio Fondazione Prada (Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II) just in time for the next fashion week.

Curated by AI researcher and Distinguished Research Professor at New York University Kate Crawford and artist and researcher Trevor Paglen, "Training Humans" (12th September 2019 - 24th February 2020), is a photographic exhibition featuring a wide range of images portraying human beings. These pictures are employed by scientists to train artificial intelligence systems on how to see and categorise the world.

The exhibition is indeed a journey of discovery through AI, almost a historical interrogation that starts with the images used in the first computerized facial recognition lab founded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the U.S. from 1963 onward, and includes also large visual databases used for visual object recognition software research such as ImageNet (2009). 

As stated by Trevor Paglen, "when we first started conceptualizing this exhibition over two years ago, we wanted to tell a story about the history of images used to 'recognize' humans in computer vision and AI systems. We weren't interested in either the hyped, marketing version of AI nor the tales of dystopian robot futures."

Kate Crawford adds in a press release, "We wanted to engage directly with the images that train AI systems, and to take those images seriously as a part of a rapidly evolving culture. They represent the new vernacular photography that drives machine vision. To see how this works, we analyzed hundreds of training sets to understand how these 'engines of seeing' operate." 

To allow visitors to discover how these systems operate, the artist and the curator looked at a series of key developments: in the 1990s, a more advanced generation of computer vision systems was for example created by the U.S. Department of Defense Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office.

For a database known as Face Recognition Technology (FERET), they developed a collection of portraits of 1,199 people, for a total of 14,126 images, in order to have a "standard benchmark" - which allows researchers to develop algorithms on a common database of images.

In more recent years the Internet and in particular social media helped the proliferation of images and AI researchers moved from using government-owned collections, such as FBI mugshots of deceased criminals, to gathering photographs from the web, a practice that turned into the norm. Many people in the AI field (from both private and public sectors) began harvesting millions of publicly-available images without asking permission or consent from the photographers or subjects of the photos.

The application of labels to these images - often done in labs or by Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) low-paid workers (usually working remotely from their own homes on mind-numbing and spirit-crushing, alienating and repetitive tasks that computers can't do yet, jobs that end up causing also some physical issues such as carpal tunnel syndrome as these workers often end up ticking boxes and clicking endlessly on their mouse to classify images of people and objects...) - produces a regime of classifications, with people tagged by race, gender, age, emotion, and sometimes personal character.

As underlined by Paglen, "this exhibition shows how these images are part of a long tradition of capturing people's images without their consent, in order to classify, segment, and often stereotype them in ways that evokes colonial projects of the past."

The exhibition curators prompt visitors not just to think about the representation of human beings whose images are harvested, interpreted and codified through training datasets, but at the way these photographs are labelled and classified, creating new biases and boundaries, making assumptions and errors, generating new prejudices and ideologies and, last but not least, perpetuating a dark history of social classification, post-colonial and racist systems of population segmentation.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville created for example a dataset of 20,000 faces to classify people by race, gender, and age. According to it, gender is binary and race can be represented by the categories White, Black, Asian, Indian, and Others. 

Besides, AI systems are even used to measure people's facial expressions to assess everything from mental health, whether someone should be hired or if a person is going to commit a crime. 

Through the images on display, visitors will be given the chance to look at the AI technologies used in our society, from facial recognition and gait detection to biometric surveillance and even emotion recognition, and wonder who has the power to build and benefit from these systems.

"What we hope is that 'Training Humans' gives us at least a moment to start to look back at these systems and understand, in a more forensic way, how they see and categorize us," Crawford concludes.     

If you want to discover more about AI systems, you can check out also Crawford's installation "Anatomy of an AI System" with Vladan Joler, part of La Triennale di Milano's event "Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival " (until 1st September 2019); Crawford's new book Atlas of AI (Yale University Press) will instead be published next year.

There's only one question that remains, will Miuccia Prada be inspired by the many possibilities of Artificial Intelligence systems for her next catwalk and collection? Time will tell.  

Image credits for this post

All images courtesy of Fondazione Prada. The images used in this exhibition are all drawn from publicly available training sets. If you see an image of yourself and you would like to have it removed from the event, please contact Fondazione Prada: [email protected]

1.
UTK Face, 2017
Zhifei Zhang, Yang Song, and Hairong Qi
Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville created this dataset of 20,000 faces to classify people by race, gender, and age. According to the dataset, gender is binary and race can be represented by the categories White, Black, Asian, Indian, and Others.

2 - 7. 
FERET Dataset, 1993-1996
National Institute of Standards
Dataset funded by the United States military's Counterdrug Technology Program for use in facial recognition research.

8 and 9.
CAISA Gate and Cumulative Foot Pressure, 2001
Shuai Zheng, Kaigi Huang, Tieniu Tan and Dacheng Tao
Created at the Center for Biometrics and Security Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the dataset is designed for research into recognizing people by the signature of their gait.

10 - 13.
SDUMLA-HMT, 2011
Yilong Yin, Lili Liu, and Xiwei Sun
The  iris prints come from a larger multimodal dataset developed at Shandong University in Jinan, China, which includes faces, irises, finger veins, and fingerprints for use in biometric applications.

Fashion Obituary: Isabel Toledo, Genius Pattern-Maker, Fashion and Costume Designer Extraordinaire (1960-2019)

Until the beginning of July the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) had an exhibition on entitled "Labor of Love" by Isabel and Ruben Toledo.

The duo examined the DIA's collection and selected a series of pieces that inspired their new sculptures, paintings, drawings and fashion designs that were then displayed in the museum spaces next to the original artworks.

In one of the rooms there were black gowns hanging from the ceiling; in another, mannequins in sculpted black gowns with their heads covered in black hoods and veils, represented a celebration of immigration and integration of different cultures in the local social fabric, while in another space there was a sumptuous golden gown, covered with a black cape, an ensemble that called to mind the black robes donned by statues of the Virgin Mary mourning the death of her son.

These sombre inspirations instantly came to mind when an email from Isabel Toledo's studio announced that the designer had died from breast cancer at 59.

Born in Cuba in 1960, Maria Isabel Izquierdo developed a fascination for sewing as a child. Isabel spent in Cuba an idyllic childhood, surrounded by strong female presences, from her mother to her aunts and neighbours, all independent women with their own distinctive style and personality, and fascinated by a quiet house presence, a sewing machine that belonged to her grandfather's first wife.

In 1968, after the Cuban Revolution, her parents decided to move to the United States and settled in West New York, N.J. Here a new chapter opened in Isabel's life. While perfectly managing to integrate herself in this new culture and environment in which freedom was the keyword, young Isabel developed a new obsession - sewing - and a genuine passion for cutting patterns.

Soon sewing her clothes turned from a child's hobby into a form of communication: going out at weekends and discovering the New York dance scene was the perfect excuse to keep on creating clothes and experimenting with patterns.

She started collaborating with her future husband, artist and illustrator Ruben Toledo, like her a Cuban refugee, soon after meeting him in high school. Together they tried to find new ways to mix art and fashion, and Isabel started selling her first designs at the Fiorucci shop.

Spotted by Madonna's stylist Maripol, who was at the time also in charge of finding young designers to showcase at Fiorucci's, they were offered a prime spot in a concession stand at the store where they enlisted the help of a very special sale assistant, model and filmmaker Suzie Zabrowska.

Through the shop Isabel and Ruben met key characters including Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias. The couple also started collaborating on Arias and Nomi's performances, designing their sets and costumes. 

Orders from Henri Bendel and Patricia Field's shop followed, the fashion media spotted the new designer and eventually the first catwalk show arrived in 1984. From that moment on the Toledos kept on growing, developing a designer's alphabet and offering innovative fashion solutions to women eager to experiment with their wardrobes.

Isabel's unique designs gained a cult following: she had an unconventional working method as she did not sketch, but directly worked with the fabric, describing a design to Ruben who would then translate it on paper. Isabel's three-dimensional approach and innovative pattern making are clear in many of her architectural designs.

Geometric shapes turned a simple coat into a perfect sculpture; a dress and jacket recreated in their forms the silhouette of a pagoda, while the multi-faceted cut of a diamond was reproduced on white draped rayon jersey dresses. Some garments were characterised by cocooning shapes, others, like the "Convertible Lettuce" dress, by thin and ethereal layers of silk crepe gazar or by minutely draped motifs that formed on the fabric a sort of waterfall-like effect, while jersey and taffeta dresses could change shape thanks to thin cords of fabric or cables. Isabel's modus operandi and her fascination with innovative construction meant that she was often compared by fashion historians and critics to designers Charles James and Geoffrey Beene.

Isabel Toledo served as creative director for Anne Klein from 2006 to 2007, and worked with big retailers such as Target, Lane Bryant and Payless ShoeSource, collaborations that were conceived not as ways to go global, but as opportunities to offer to a wider audience the chance of buying one of her pieces. 

In the late 1990s Isabel Toledo dropped out of New York Fashion Week to slow down and create collections at her own pace rather than at breakneck speed. In her autobiography Roots of Style: Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion (2012; with illustrations were by Ruben Toledo), the decision is explained with these words: "The fashion scene shifted to the entertaining, slick theatrical productions of the fashion shows themselves. The emphasis was no longer on the clothes; in fact the spotlight seemed to be on everything but the clothes (…) Designing minds need time to nurture original ideas and allow them to develop. This is like replanting a forest: if we don't allow enough time for this important natural process, we end up with open ground that is barren of new ideas."

Leaving the runways turned out to be the best choice as being free from the time constraints of the fashion seasons helped Isabel and Ruben Toledo to focus on other types of work and create timeless designs. 

The recipient of National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt museum in 2005, Isabel Toledo was honoured with the retrospective "Fashion from the Inside Out" at the Fashion Institute of Technology Museum in New York. In an interview about that exhibition, Dr. Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT, defined her "an icon of style".  

Isabel was nominated for a Tony for the costumes for the musical "After Midnight" in 2014 and with Ruben she designed new sets and costumes for the Miami City Ballet's 2017 production of "The Nutcracker." Isabel also served on the CFDA Board for many years, always supporting small, independent designers.

She then entered history as the designer who created the lemongrass wool lace shift dress with matching overcoat that First Lady Michelle Obama chose for her husband Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009, a dress that symbolically ushered in a new era of hope (crushed by current US President Donald Trump...), anticipating a different political relationship between the U.S.A. and Cuba (in 2016 Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to visit Cuba since 1928). 

Yet Isabel Toledo has been many women in her life and not just the designer of the iconic lemongrass dress: as a young woman she interned at the Met while former Harper's Bazaar editrix Diana Vreeland was the consultant at the museum's Costume Institute, an experience that allowed her to admire, study and touch historical creations, helping to install exhibitions and discovering the Costume Institute Conservation Laboratory with its expert seamstresses; she is also the designer of costumes for performances, troupes and dance legends including Twyla Tharp and Christopher Wheeldon, and worked with Ruben as artists in residence at the Pilchuck Glass School.

There is also the Isabel who loved fashion journalists' curiosity in discovering new talents and nurturing them and the Isabel who revolutionised the runways before the front row was radically changed by celebrities, bloggers and influencers.

At her shows there was indeed a "first come, first served" sitting arrangement, so that a fashion journalist would end up sitting next to a drag performer, museum curators next to textile manufacturers and so on. 

Uninterested in fame and in being exploited by the corporate forces of fashion, Isabel Toledo was a rare gem in the vast ocean of this industry, a woman in love with design rather than with trends. Isabel is survived by Ruben, along with two of her sisters, Mary Santos and Anna Bertha Izquierdo.  

One of the latest installations she created was the centerpiece for the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) exhibition, "Synthetic Cloud", featuring 11 pale blue tutus hiding layers of vividly coloured underskirts. Maybe that's how she will restyle the angels now that they are her heavenly customers.   

R.I.P. Isabel Toledo (1960–2019)

News have just spread about the untimely death of fashion and costume designer Isabel Toledo and our thoughts go to her family and friends and in particular to her husband Ruben. An obituary will follow, but, in the meantime, we would like to remember her with a quote from Dr. Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT, taken from an interview we did in 2009 about the exhibition "Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out".

"I think that what makes Isabel a real 'designer's designer' and an interesting artist to people who are into fashion is the fact that she is so independent and she's always kind of experimenting. Her patterns are not ordinary patterns. She knows how ordinary patterns work and she has been working with them since she was eight years old, but she will ignore them. She wouldn't put in a sleeve the way other people put in a sleeve, so she just experiments, which means that very often she needs to explain her work, because people have never seen anything like that. She jokes saying that her clothes always sell out at Barneys, partly because her clients buy them and her production is small, and partly because manufacturers of other designers buy them and try to take them apart to figure out how she gets certain effects, because she does things in a new way. That's the most interesting aspect of her work."  

Soft Three-Dimensional Face Sculptures: On Aldo Lanzini's Crocheted Masks

In yesterday's post we looked at the power of a fashionable metal mask sculpted by an artist, so let's create a contrast today looking at soft masks made with a wide range of yarns (with some scraps of fabric added at times) and made using the crochet technique by Aldo Lanzini.

The Milan-based crochet artist and fashion lecturer at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano (NABA) has been developing masks for over 15 years.

As he stated in previous interview with Irenebrination, he never starts his designs with a precise plan in mind: Lanzini doesn't prepare any drawings or sketches, but develops his masks on the face, starting somewhere and ending up somewhere else, adding, altering and transforming the pieces as he goes about.

He never sets to create an animal mask or an alien masks, but the result - often dictated by the colours of yarns employed, by
their thickness and by Lanzini's personal motto "The eyes of human beings are more often than not closed rather than open" -
may as well be that of an alien animal or a monstrously fun animalesque alien. 

These three-dimensional configurations made of yarns, combine craftvism with radical currents, inviting the wearers to turn into rebels and make a non-violent revolution. 

Lanzini's crochet masks appeared also as showpieces during fashion runways (such as Missoni's S/S 2011 collection, when ushers donned them) and they were on display at Milan's La Triennale.

Check out the video at the end of this post to see them at the famous Milanese institution and to find new inspirations to start a new week (and if you fancy a mask for yourself or you need several ones for your fashion show, you can contact Lanzini here). So who says that crochet is "just a craft" and it is not design?

Sculpted Metal Tattoos: Ungaro on Masks, 1968

In the last two posts we looked at arty masks or at the theme of masks interpreted by artists, so let's refocus on the power of masks in fashion with this picture by Richard Avedon showing model Penelope Tree wearing a metallic mask sculpted by Gustin for Ungaro. The photograph, taken in 1968, was accompanied by a photoshoot  in which Penelope Tree donned two silver masks. This one was particularly striking as it webbed around the face, highlighting the eyes in a metal tattoo-like frame. 

Explaining his fascination with these pieces, Ungaro stated about masks, "When you see people for the first time you tend to label them without knowing what they really are. These masks represent the 'inner face' of a person - once you know her, know what is going on in her mind. It's the whole problem of human communication – the masks force people to understand that one must learn really to look, they incite the search for what is beyond the first impression."

From Grotesque to Anonymous: The Mask According to Cameron Jamie @ The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice

In yesterday's post we looked at the exhibition "Mask. In Present-Day Art", opening next week at the Aargauer Kunsthaus. Among the other artists included in the event there will be also Cameron Jamie. Masks are considered by critics as the leitmotif of the American artist whose artworks are also on display at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice. Jamie seems indeed to be fascinated by the fact that, by hiding the self, masks allow the wearer to impersonate someone else and escape in this way from the restraints of public social expectations. 

For his installation at the Arsenale Jamie was inspired by the folk tradition of the Perchten, an Alpine winter character associated with the Krampus. The artist already explored the Krampuslauf in a 2002 video in which he documented the tradition of men dressing like a half-goat, half-demon horned beast that punishes children and young women who have been naughty during the year.

"Smiling Disease" (2008) in the Arsenale features a group of grotesque carved wooden masks that the artist commissioned to an Austrian craftsman. The masks are adorned with horns and tufts of hair and fur and, while they do have some connection with tribal artefacts and ritual masks (like the ones collected by the Surrealists in the early 20th century), they are mainly meant to dehumanise the wearers, reducing them to monsters.

Jamie's installation in the Central Pavilion features instead three hand-moulded untitled glazed ceramic masks, fixed to the wall. The peculiarity of these masks in rich swirling tones achieved by repeatedly firing and glazing the material, stands in the fact that their interiors are presented outward towards the viewers who can in this way reverse the roles of protagonist and audience and feel empathy with the mask wearer while offering alternative ways of representing the projected self.

So who would you rather be, the frightening and macabre grotesque Krampus or the silent wearer of an anonymous glazed ceramic mask? 

The Power of Transformations: "Mask. In Present-Day Art" @ The Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland

Masks immediately conjure up in our minds the ebullient joys of Carnival or the darkness surrounding mysterious rituals or folk traditions. Actually masks have never been so popular as they are now: you may argue indeed that we all take a different "persona" (a term that in its Latin etymology referred to a theatrical mask) the minute we wake up and we decide what to wear.

Besides, in our times ruled by social media, we all tend to amplify our individual digital essence via new means of communications, letting our fake and intangible identities take over, or maybe we try and hide from surveillance technology with innovative disguises that can guarantee us maximum freedom and anonymity, allowing us to escape from facial recognition cameras and from their errors. Children may use masks to have fun and pretend they are the super human beings of their favourite shows and films; grown-ups may employ them in a protest or even a war - think for example about activists and soldiers with their faces covered up. There are physical, metaphysical and symbolical masks; there are inspiring forms of masquerading and scary disguises or masks that subvert gender and role assignments.

So masks are not just a trend, but a wonderful theme that perfectly fits to our complex times. That's why art museum Aargauer Kunsthaus, in Aarau, Switzerland, is launching an exhibition focusing on this topic next week.

The international group show "Mask. In Present-Day Art" (1st September 2019 - 5th January 2020), explores the way contemporary artists use masks to explore a wide variety of issues such as self-presentation and how to radically transform our identities, playing with stereotypes and inverting and subverting roles while creating contrasts and tensions between revealing one's face and personality or hiding them.

Curated by Madeleine Schuppli, Director, in collaboration with Yasmin Afschar, Curator at the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the event features 160 works created in the past ten years using a variety of media, so visitors will be able to look at objects, watch videos and performances and look at paintings and photographs.

All the artists featured explore the issue in depth and with unusual materials and media, leaving behind more traditional masks to discuss the social, cultural, political and symbolic implications behind masks.

In her series "Nomads" Laura Lima turns painted landscapes into masks and hangs them on a wall as if they were paintings: in this way the wearer becomes a surreal landscape, triggering confusion and a sense of alienation in the person staring at them.

Other masks included in this exhibition are not designed to be worn - among them there are Sabian Baumann's unfired clay masks or Amanda Ross-Ho's uncanny oversized cosmetic face masks, maybe stolen from the bedroom of a giant.

The collages of Kader Attia offer a contemporary and critical look at how people deal with mask traditions as the artist provokingly contrasts historical photographs of mutilated soldiers' faces with anthropological mask objects.

Some projects revolving around masks tackle profound themes such as transitoriness: Douglas Gordon uses adhesive tape to turn himself into a monster mask, while Gillian Wearing dons a silicon masks in "Self Portrait as My Mother Jean Gregory" to transform herself into her mum and disappear in the folds of time, erasing her own identity in the process.

Dividing his time between Brussels, Zurich, Paris and Stockholm, textile designer and artist Christoph Hefti works in fashion textiles, print and the performing arts. The exhibition features his "World Mask", one of his hand-knotted rugs made in Nepal, that moves from the mystical and spiritual tradition of storytelling textiles.

Film fans will be mesmerised by John Stezaker's transformation of movie stars via vintage postcards of landscapes. In this way easily recognisable faces turn into empty landscapes, hinting at the fact that behind that glamorous façade we see there may be a psychological abyss.

Younger visitors to the event who are into social media will enjoy more Susanne Weirich's selfie films of an online community turned into a tableau vivant in her multimedia installation "Global Charcoal Challenge", or Olaf Breuning's emojis overimposed on photographs to create digital emotional states over real images.

The performance of Kosovar artist Sislej Xhafa are among the most striking works: Xhafa usually collaborates with orchestras, but the sublime quality of the musicians playing together is disturbed by the fact that all the musicians in his performances look anonymous as they wear balaclavas.

This exercise in anonymity injects a sense of insecurity in the viewer who wonders why they are covering up their faces - are they maybe dangerous characters ready for action or are they planning a revolution with a most sublime weapon, music?

We are not provided with any definitive answers to some of the questions these works may pose, but we may find more questions in the other works on display including Cindy Sherman and Ugo Rondinone's, pieces that may trigger secret fights with our own selves and a quest for a new essence or a dynamic mutation hopefully leading to catharsis. 

And, if after visiting the event you realise you haven't changed or transformed even by metaphorically wearing all the masks you may have seen, don't panic, transformation is indeed still possible on an everyday basis. After all, as German political philosopher Hannah Arendt stated, "the masks or roles which the world assigns us, and which we must accept and even acquire if we wish to take part in the world's play at all, are exchangeable".  

"Mask. In Present-Day Art" (1st September 2019 - 5th January 2020) is launching on 31st August 2019 at Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland,with a performance by Sislej Xhafa in cooperation with Argovia Philharmonic. The exhibition is accompanied by a volume with introductory essays by Madeleine Schuppli and Yasmin Afschar, while artist and designer Christoph Hefti created a silk scarf in connection with the MASK exhibition that will be available from the museum shop.   

Image credits for this post

1. John Stezaker, Mask (Film Portrait Collage) 
CLXXIII, 2014
Collage, 20 x 17.6 cm
Courtesy the artist and The Approach, London
© the artist, courtesy the artist and The Approach, London
Foto: FXP Photography, London, 2014

2. Sabian Baumann, Untitled, 2008
Unfired clay, paint, ca. 24 x 15 x 12 cm
In possession of the artist
Courtesy Galerie Mark Müller, Zürich
© Sabian Baumann
Foto: Anja Busse

3. Gillian Wearing, Self Portrait as My Mother Jean Gregory, 2003
Framed Bromide Print, 150 x 131 x 3.2 cm
Kunsthaus Zürich, Photo collection 2003
© Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

4. Aneta Grzeszykowska, Selfie #19, 2014
Pigment print on cobon paper, 27 x 36 cm
Fotomuseum Winterthur Collection
© Aneta Grzeszykowska
Foto: Courtesy of Raster Gallery, Warsaw

5. Laura Lima, Nomads, 2008
Acrylic on canvas, 77 x 34 x 3 cm
Courtesy the artist and Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo
© Laura Lima
Foto: Edouard Fraipont

6. Edson Chagas, OIKONOMOS, 2011
C-Print, 100 x 100 cm
Courtesy of the artist and APALAZZOGALLERY
© Edson Chagas

7. Amanda Ross-Ho, Untitled Apparatus (RED, GREEN, BLUE), 2017
Satin, foam, elastic band, thread
Each 190 x 71 x 5 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Praz-Delavallade, Paris / Los Angeles
© Amanda Ross-Ho
Foto: Ruben Diaz

8. Christoph Hefti, World Mask, 2014
Dyed wool, natural wool and silk (different pile heights), 100 knots, 305 x 220 cm
Courtesy MANIERA and the artist
© Christoph Heki

9. Christian Marclay, Impact (from the series 'Masks'), 1992
Record covers, archive (adhesive) tape, 126 x 94 cm
Collection of Nancy and Steve Crown
© Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

10. Mike Nelson, Untitled, 2009
Mixed Media, 120 x 60 x 30 cm
ISelf Collection
© Mike Nelson
Foto: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Courtesy the artist and Galleria Franco Noero

11. Ugo Rondinone, moonrise. south, july, 2003
Casting, polyurethane black, 40 x 22 x 14 cm
Burger Collection, Hong Kong
© Ugo Rondinone. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / New York
Foto: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zürich

12. Sislej Xhafa, Again and Again, 2000–2012
C-print, 128 x 300 cm
In collaboration with Donna Musica Orchestra, Courbevoie
Courtesy GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins / Habana
© Sislej Xhafa

13. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #317, 1996
Cibachrome, 147 x 99.7 cm
Goetz Collection, Munich
© Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

14. Gauri Gill, Untitled, from Acts of Appearance, 2015-ongoing
Pigment print on archive paper, 40.6 x 61 cm
Courtesy Gauri Gill
© Gauri Gill

15. Olaf Breuning, Emojis, 2014
C-print/Photo wallpaper, Variable dimensions
Courtesy of the Artists
© 2019 Studio Olaf Breuning