Face and Mask

Carlos Amorales 

 with works by Jeroen Kooijmaans , Azzurra de Gregorio , Chiara Zenzani , Rowena Morales , Víctor    del Moral , Astrid Svangren , Eric Tlaseca , Issac Olvera.

Schottenfeldgasse 45, 1070 Vienna

Face and Mask 

Carlos Amorales turns the mask into a mirror of our time. It is not merely an ornament or disguise, but a territory where identity, myth, and power intersect.

This new exhibition reveals how what the mask conceals ends up showing with greater force: the fragility of the human in the face of technology, the tension between the local and the global, between the intimate and the collective. Far from conceiving the face or the mask as an aesthetic or ritual accessory, the artist places them at the center of a reflection that questions identity, representation, and the politics of the image in the digital age.

Since ancient times, the mask has served as a mediator between the self and the other, between the human and the divine, between the visible and the hidden. Amorales takes up this symbolic device and inserts it into a field of current tensions, where the face and mask become a space of social recognition and subjectivity confronted with media saturation, technological control, and the precariousness of cultural narratives in globalization.

The dialogue established with the iconic figure of El Santo, the Silver-Masked Man, is fundamental. By recovering this symbol of Mexican identity, Carlos not only refers to a popular icon, but also exposes the fragility of collective identities in the face of global discourse. The wrestling mask, which in its original context protects while simultaneously constructing a myth, here becomes a metaphor for a lost search for identity, an attempt to cling to cultural signs in the face of homogenization.

The critique is enriched by the reference to Roland Barthes: myth as a mask that conceals ideologies. In this sense, Amorales’ work not only plays with visual surface, but also reveals how the images we consume and produce in the digital age reproduce naturalized falsehoods, legitimizing structures of power. The mask, in his proposal, ceases to be a simple object and becomes a mechanism for critical reading of the contemporary.

Taken as a whole, Face and Mask transcends the formalism of portraiture or visual object. His drawings and audiovisuals function as critical essays that invite viewers to rethink not only the function of the mask, but also the nature of identity in a present shaped by screens, algorithms, and globalized narratives. Carlos manages to turn the unsettling quality of the mask—its capacity to simultaneously conceal and reveal—into fertile ground for questioning the tensions between art, technology, and ideology.

In the exhibition Face and Mask, eight artists from different latitudes engage in dialogue with the work of Carlos Amorales, taking the mask as their starting point. From diverse disciplines—installation, performance, visual arts, painting, and sculpture—each proposal turns the mask into a territory of meanings in constant transformation: identity and anonymity, ritual and resistance, concealment and revelation. This collective space not only broadens the reading of Amorales’ work, but also invites the public to discover how the mask, beyond its form, remains a living symbol that connects cultures, memories, and contemporary sensibilities.

The title of this exhibition is inspired by a work of Hans Belting, whose reflections have decisively shaped the contemporary studies on images.

Oscarito Sanchez

We invite you to Prague Quadrennial’s symposium on Technologies in theatre, performance, and exhibition design. Together with almost a hundred speakers from 30 countries across six continents, we will be exploring the multi-dimensional dynamic of technologies in theatre, performance, and exhibition design.

SYMPOSIUM: ‘TECHNOLOGIES’

Technologies in theatre, performance, and exhibition design

October 16–18, 2024
Vzlet Cultural Centre
Holandská 1, Prague 10 (map)

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Whether old or new, high or low, digital or analogue, technologies, or different tools, instruments, devices, equipment, machines, and machinery, are potential and potent resources in the scenographic process. The recent technological developments that require more specialized knowledge and expertise have brought on the need and the opportunity for scenographers and designers to collaborate with scientists, engineers, and industry partners. While pushing the boundaries of what is possible in performance, employing these most advanced technologies is conditioned by access, stemming from material, institutional, and political conditions in which we produce art. Moreover, our ideas of technologies are often reduced to Western notions of progress and innovation.

Together with more than 80 speakers from 30 countries across six continents – performance designers, scenographers, makers, artists, and researchers who work with and on technologies – we will be exploring the multi-dimensional dynamic of technologies in theatre, performance, and exhibition design.

 

 

-> 12 July, 20:00 – Lepenski Vir, Serbia
-> 14 July, 20:00 – Dorcol Platz, Belgrade
-> 18 July, 18:00 – Museo Sigismondo Castromediano, Lecce

-> 22-23 July, 18.30 – Valley of Arts Festival,Kapolcs, Hungary

FIRST EUROPE PROJECT behind VIR aims to promote and celebrate Europe’s archaeological heritage, with a special focus on the fascinating site of Lepenski Vir in Serbia, which formed one of the oldest settlements in Europe, hence the name of our project: FIRST EUROPE.

Partners of the project:
Y csoport
ECCOM – Idee per la Cultura
Lepenski Vir

DANCE + HACKATHON = DANSATHON

DANSATHON is a 3 days connected, collaborative, European event to imagine the future of dance.

At the crossroads between dance and new technologies to imagine new artistic forms, new stages, new experiences and new ways to engage. Combining the best of these two worlds to imagine the dance of tomorrow, enhance cultural life and social interactions. These are the aim of the DANSATHON project.

Initiated by BNP Paribas Foundation, the Dansathon is co-organised and developed in partnership with three major Dance Institutions :

• La Maison de la Danse de Lyon (France)
• Sadler’s Wells (UK)
• Théâtre de Liège (Belgium)

Creature fiabesche difformi, contornate da    un’aura di perturbante bellezza, emergono lentamente da un paesaggio misterioso, dando corpo e bellezza alle nostre paure più recondite. La visione di simili creature è possibile solo se scegliamo di guardarle intenzionalmente, solo se accettiamo che dentro di noi abiti una parte oscura, lunare, non addomesticabile. Accettare significa vedere, e vedere conoscere, portare alla luce. Accade dunque che imparare a praticare questo tipo di sguardo ci coinvolga in una battaglia perenne ma necessaria. Come aveva infatti ben compreso Nietzsche: “Chi combatte con i mostri deve guardarsi dal non diventare egli stesso un mostro. E se guarderai a lungo nell’abisso, l’abisso guarderà dentro di te”.

LINK ALL’ARTICOLO COMPLETO