Peres Projects puts African helmet masks on ten contemporary artists

 

The African helmet masks currently in dialogue at Peres Projects, in Berlin, with a group of ten contemporary artists – including the film director Harmony Korine and painter David Ostrowski – belong to Javier Peres himself and they are not for sale. These seven masks are indeed part of a collection of 45 Bundus helmet masks that Mr. Peres has gathered together during the years.

 

As reported on the web site of the “Vatican Museums”, which also have some of these kind in their collections, “this type of mask is used by the Sande female society on the occasion of the most solemn anniversaries, while exercising justice, during funeral ceremonies and in the initiation that makes it possible to become a Sande. On the latter occasion, the masks are worn by women who have a certain standing within the society, to receive the younger women at the end of their three month’s reclusion in the forest. The long costume, that completes the mask, serves to disguise the whole body. This mask represents the spirit of fecundity and is considered the incarnation of the female waters. The masks always have female characteristics, even when they incarnate the male ancestral spirit. The different elements that compose the masks of this type, the half-closed and lengthened eyes, the delicate contours of the lips, the slim nose, the serenity of the forehead, the complexity of the headdress and the presence of neck and nape refer not only to aesthetic values, but also to philosophical and religious concepts.”

 

Setting a parallel between the role of these items and the artwork’s role in the contemporary society would be a game too easy to play. Of course the Vatican Museums’ description could be read as a metaphor of what an artwork means also in the society where museums, galleries and auction houses live. Therefore we would like to propose another comparison, that is with the charm that Africa influenced on painters such as Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso at their time.

 

In 1907 the masks covering two of the five Demoiselles d’Avignon were probably perceived by the audience as a strong visual dissonance conveying the ambiguous eroticism that characterizes the image. The beholder asked to himself, which kind of desire are these brutal masks hiding? Where are they from? Am I supposed to consider them beautiful? And then he would react to the painting thinking how far the ideal of “classical” beauty was gone from the society he was living in.

 

Today that feeling of dissonance is totally lost, and also the mystery once provided by objects of art coming from unknown cultures. Paintings and masks on show at Peres Projects are items coming from the same realm, and channel information relatively easy to be found. Therefore it’s possible to imagine Will Boone’s or Ida Ekblad’s paintings as the perfect scenario for a religious ritual or indeed, the helmet masks turned conceptual by an astonishing title. The horizontal wire linking, for example, the Medieval age to contemporary art is the same one which somehow connects African traditional art to emerging Western artists. The only problem is that at the moment this wire is just available here, and not there yet.

 

 

 

 

September 22, 2014