Mask

In Mask I am exploring the curated versions of ourselves that we all present to the world, and how these “masks” relate to our inner private experience. I am questioning where the mask ends and where the person beneath begins, and which version more truthfully reflects who we are. I started working on this series before, during and after realising in my late thirties that I am neurodivergent as I began to untangle whether and how I present a mask to the world, and who I am without that mask. I have since expanded the series to reflect on the masks I fluidly exchange as a queer person with a multicultural background moving between cultures, spaces and social situations. Mask encompasses mixed media woodcut and lithography (mokulito) prints that sometimes include elements of collage. The prints incorporate natural and foraged pigments as a nod to our shared origins in (and ultimate return to) nature, reminding us that there is an original innocent self that existed before we started constructing our masks, which we have the agency to rediscover and reveal. I often work with pigments like coal and rust that undergo transformations in the same way that we are transformed by the masks we wear.

Media: woodcut, lithography (mokulito), collage

Date: 2024 (ongoing)