May 31 2007

Text By Meera Sethi

The word mask comes from a Medieval Latin root meaning "specter," "witch," or "nightmare." It's a slippery, troubling word, full of suspicion and vaguely suggestive of malice. A mask’s appearance may be jovial or terrifying, but it is at heart a dissembler’s tool, intended to obscure, confuse, conceal, or disarm. Whether an ancient shaman, a stately Noh actor, or a coquettish Renaissance dancer wears it, there is no such thing as a kindly mask.

Flirtatious, perhaps; intriguing, certainly. Mysterious as the face of God, supple as the sweetest lover’s lie—the moment we invented masks we acknowledged that we live in a fabulous, fictive world of our own devising. With fig leaves we marked the public shame of our first sin; with masks we slyly celebrate our ability to hide all the ones that have followed since.