Connections/Masks

My name is Yäelle Biro. I'm a curator for African art. And my name is Dirk Breiding. I'm a curator in the department of Arms and Armor. Biro: And we're here to speak about "Masks."

Masks are universal. Everybody can relate to them. They're faces

they look at you. On a book cover, you want to have

faces, because that's what people are attracted to. With masks, it's a little bit of the same idea.

Breiding: As I grew up in Germany, the carnival season is the time when you dress up and

you wear masks. I always was fascinated by the

possibility to take on another personality. As you grow older, as a teenager, you

begin to realize that the face, the human face in itself is a mask.

Biro: It's true that we, we do wear masks all the time. And at work, I have hyperactive eyebrows, and if I

start talking everybody just knows exactly what I'm thinking at any given moment. Breiding: You can hide behind

it, when you tell a little lie or something. You put a different face on, than what you're actually thinking. At the same time, it's also a means to convey things, when you're very happy, when you're extremely sad. Even

though it's an illusion that you can read someone's face, it's still somewhat comforting to look into another human face when you're meeting them, seeing them.

Biro: This idea of hiding and revealing, I find very interesting. Breiding: You let your guard or your mask down

depending on the company you're in. It allows a freedom.

You can watch other people without them watching you. People can't read you, so they have no idea

what you're up to, whether good or bad. And it is an incredible feeling of empowerment. Biro: Wearing a mask you become a

concept, something completely different, an animal, something otherworldly. You know

even one mask can change with the costume, with the music, with the dance.

When you look at this static mask in the galleries, you have to imagine that it was just constantly in movement. Colors and geometric patterns moving around.

They remain faces, but in each of these places, maybe they lose a little part of themselves at the same time, so

their aesthetics themselves evolve with the time and with each different owner.

Breiding: Some people looking at masks in the galleries have no idea about the ritual context. There's always a twofold approach

to a mask. How you encounter a mask, and how you see or imagine yourself wearing it. Liberty and

power are very closely connected. The mask gives you the power to be free and do what you like.

Do things that you know other people might not expect of you

much more than when you're bound to your own personality. An obvious connection with love and

erotic behavior and sex comes in. Biro: Masquerades are clearly the places where anything can happen.

Breiding: That's when it becomes more playful. Biro: People are without any bounds anymore. They just go out and get drunk and dance and

and anything can happen.