To celebrate the release of the book Personas 111 - The Art of Wig Making 2017-2020 by Japanese hair artist, head prop designer and wig maker Tomihiro Kono (河野富広) out today on Konomad Editions, I'm publishing here an extended version of the essay I wrote for the volume. Get ready to enter the Mask-thrix!
"The use of the word person in every European language to signify a human individual is unintentionally appropriate; persona really means a player's mask, and it is quite certain that no one shows himself as he is, but that each wears a mask and plays a role. In general, the whole of social life is a continual comedy, which the worthy find insipid, whilst the stupid delight in it greatly." - Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays of Schopenhauer
The first thing that may come to your mind while observing Tomihiro Kono's wigs is punk. It is indeed easy to identify in the spiky hairstyles, bright colours and in that latent sense of rebellion, all the tropes of this subculture. Yet, to understand Tomihiro Kono's work, you have to go back to the early performances of Greek and Latin plays.
During these representations actors would wear masks that helped them getting into their roles. Masks helped the audience identifying the various characters even from a great distance and hearing the actors better as the masks were designed to amplify their voices and they were also conceived as instruments to achieve an internal metamorphosis.
The aim and purpose of masks often changed with the playwrights: Aeschylus was the first author to introduce the use of masks in his tragedies; Euripides gave masks a better characterisation, so that they could represent different human emotions.
Masks became vehicles for a social and political satire in Aristophanes' comedies and Menander used them to represent well-established characters borrowed from everyday life. Inspired by him, Latin author Plautus employed masks to represent comedic stereotypes, while in Terentius' plays masks showed figures in constant evolution.
From tools that could help actors getting into their roles, masks turned into instruments for an internal metamorphosis. The possibility of going through a personal mutation is also another theme of classical stories, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Apuleius' The Golden Ass.
Behind Tomihiro Kono's work there is a modern reinterpretation of two parallel phenomena that come from the classics – masks and the power of transformations.
When you put on one of his hand-crafted wigs you take on a different "persona" - a term that in its Latin etymology referred to a theatrical mask - and become an entirely new character.
A shy person may transform into a rebellious punk; a tough individual may adopt the style and manners of a romantic lady in a powdered wig from the 1700s. A man may turn into a woman; a woman into a man. Or they may choose to become genderless beings, individuals who may be anything, even a powerful monster à la Medusa.
Tomihiro Kono's wigs are for everybody and this is the main reason why his creations find a parallelism also with the Venetian 1700s costume of the bauta, that comprised a black cape, a tricorne hat and a white mask called "larva" (meaning "ghost" in Latin). People dressed in the bauta were allowed to walk around the Venetian calli any day of the year, and the outfit was not just a costume, but a transformative tool. All sorts of people could wear it with no distinctions of social classes or sex, and the disguise guaranteed maximum freedom and anonymity, just like Tomihiro Kono's wigs.
German political philosopher Hannah Arendt stated that "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". The same can be said about Tomihiro Kono's wigs included in the volume "Personas 111", a title that features a symbolic number, related to spiritual awakening and enlightenment, inspiration, intuition, optimism and self-expression. The 111 wigs in these pages are not static, but they are in continuous mutation: they take a new life when somebody wears them; they move and shake, tremble and seduce, inspire and invite. They are dramatic ways to change the way we look on the outside to change the way we feel inside.
Pink spikes and blonde braids; romantic curls, sharp green mohawks and pale blue waves; strawberry red asymmetrical bobs, rose gold soft mullets or simple straight hairstyles in a superb cobalt shade: choose and transform yourself with an uneven short shag, a page-boy hairstyle or a Chelsea haircut - you can be a naïve princess or a terrible tomboy, a punk rebel or a conformist, an artist or a mermaid.
There's the ghost of indomitable La Casati, a Belle Èpoque icon, in one fierce red wig and the revolutionary spirit of Angela Davis in a poetical afro. Another design seems to have the fluffy consistency of the sweetest candy cotton and it is a joy to the eyes and the touch. There is a long wavy wig for all those among us who want to feel like Botticelli's Venus, newly-born from a shell, a style that contrasts with the perfect smoothness of a zazzera reminiscent of the coiffure in Jacometto Veneziano's exquisite "Portrait of a Young Man". And then there are ethereal or bold styles that could fit angels or demons or that you may see donned by saints or sported by sinners.
These wigs, inspired by a combination of disciplines going from art and architecture to music, fashion and even mathematics, are indeed about finding a physical and metaphysical space, they represent an internal fight with our own selves and an opportunity to search for a new essence, grow and change, going through a process of catharsis similar to the one the audience went through while watching a performance in ancient Greece.
Last but not least, Tomihiro Kono's wigs are also a reaction to our digital society and a way to reclaim our physicality. In Latin times a persona was a mask; today our digital masks have turned into persons that amplify our individual digital essence via new means of communications and social media, letting our fake and intangible identities take over. Tomihiro Kono does not invite us to transform ourselves digitally, but physically, recurring not to plastic surgery but to a wig.
This is why a wig by Tomihiro Kono is a "mask-thrix" – a mask for the hair ("thrix" meaning "hair" in Greek), a symbol of an existential drama and the possibility of taking up not just one role, but multiple ones via radical transformations. By wearing a wig by Tomihiro Kono you can be anything and anyone but yourself. The promise is alluring. Enter the Mask-thrix.
Image credits for this post
Hair | Wig: Tomihiro Kono @ Julian Watson Agency
Photography: Sayaka Maruyama
Make-up: Chiho Omae, Nana Hiramatsu
Model: Cameron Lee Phan @ New Pandemics
Publisher: Konomad Editions
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