The Invisible Man by Zina Saro-Wiwa copyThe Invisible Man is a neo-Ogoni mask created by Zina Saro-Wiwa. Inspired by the newer “Ogele style” masquerade masks that have started appearing in Ogoniland in the late 1980s, the mask is one that depicts the men that have disappeared in Zina’s life through death or through their own design. Brother, father, lovers and illusive Ogele dancers feature on the Janus-faced mask. The black and white face representing the sadness of loss, the lined pink face the anger associated with abandonment. Worn by women only.
The Invisible Man: “The Weight of Absence” (2015) Video Triptych
The Invisible Man: “The Weight of Absence” (2015) 6 mins, video triptych, is the first video featuring and inspired by Zina’s Invisible Man mask commissioned by Seattle Art Museum for their Disguise exhibition. The triptych is a response to the detachment inherent in the display of African masks in museums. It is in direct conversation with Disguise’s remit of “bridging the gap between the mask observed in isolation and the masquerade experienced as a catalyst”. The gap, as Saro-Wiwa sees it, is brought about by emotional and cognitive disconnection to African masks and the performance of masquerade. This work and the very creation of Zina’s Invisible Man mask attempts to bring emotional discourse and emotional connectivity to a masquerade practise whose psycho-emotional geographies are diffuse:
“I wanted to create a masquerade “performance” that subverted even Seattle Art Museum’s expectations of what such a performance should look like. I didn’t just want to gather my all-female troupe have them dance with the mask I designed, film the process and say “here you go”. That might have been radical enough – having an all-female troupe, is subversive in itself – but I wanted to go further and challenge the museum’s ideas of what it means to “perform a masquerade”. I also wanted to challenge masquerade in Nigeria by going within and opening up emotional terrains. Many masks in Ogoni play on fears, talk about farming, make political statements. But I wanted to go to a more emotionally-specific place. The Invisible Man is about me creating a mask I could connect to. So I picked a highly emotional subject that had a particular resonance for me. This work is about my attempt to map the emotional geography of masquerade, to get it to tell a more intimate story and to see if creating this mask and performance had any carthatic properties. There is a magic in masquerade that I do not understand. But I am attempting to tap into it through this work.”
The work is currently on display at the Fowler Museum till the 13th March 2016 and can be seen at the Brooklyn Museum from April 28th 2016.
ABOUT THE VIDEO:
“The left screen of the triptych (seen above) consists of one side of the janus-faced Invisible Man “ogele” mask staring at the camera. It is lined and pink and above the face there is a figure of a man with a pipe and a tree behind him. The figure is my father and the tree is my (deceased) little brother whose name meant “Tree of Life”. Two invisible men in my life. This is the “angry” side of the mask. One of the emotional repercussions of loss.
“On the right hand side of the screen are a series of “performances” of exhaustion by women in my “ogele” or masquerade group. The work comments on how women have been told that they are not allowed to wear masks in our culture because they are “too heavy”. Which made me think about the loads women literally carry on their heads in rural Ogoniland. Loads that often men don’t carry at all. Several kilograms of materials on their heads or pots of water. And then of course there are the emotional loads these and other women carry also. I filmed women that were tired from dancing whilst wearing my invisible man mask and I also filmed women in the village that were tired after working at their farms. I mixed up the two “performances” and together they are supposed to convey the weight that absence produces.
“The beautiful Ogoni song being sung is one of the songs for our masquerade troop. Ordinarily it is raucously sung, featuring lots of clapping. But for this video I asked for it to be performed in a quieter, broken voice sung by a lone man. The Invisible Man, if you will.
“In the middle screen, a woman is blindfolded and lying on a banana leaf. It is not clear why she is there: if she has been captured; if she is complicit in this bondage situation; if she is fully human. The middle screen depicts her movement from foetal position to languid, sensuous stretched out position. The birth of a complicit masochism perhaps. At which point she disappears… An action instigated by the placing of the invisible man mask on the same tired woman’s face on the right hand screen. This black and white face of the mask that is revealed is the other side of Janus-faced Invisible Man mask. This side depicts the sadness of loss. The mask disappears the self. But it is also about how this demon – and the invisible man is a demon – disappears the agency and sometimes the self worth of the person affected by the disappearance.
“The smashing of the “4th wall” (or the glass display cabinet) by the pink mask brings an end to the sequence and comes out of the blue. It is a comment on the way that masks are forced to perform for Museums. The smash is a fuck you. To the museum and also the lashing out of a person in emotional pain. It also expresses the surprise and sometimes performed violence that occurs in some Ogoni masquerades.”
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen