Mask-making may be one of humanity’s oldest art forms. In the 20th and 21st centuries, fine art and mask-making have collided to create new artforms and potent combinations of familiar genres.
What follows is a brief survey of how masks and mask-making has intersected with the art world over the last 100 or so years. Feel free to click around to learn more about different eras.
For more genre guides like this, check out our post A Rough Guide to Every Digital Art Genre We Could Think Of
Masks and 20th Century Art
Pablo Picasso and Cubism
In the early 20th century, Pablo Picasso was influenced by African masks, leading to the development of Cubism. His work, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, reflects this influence by breaking from traditional forms to explore new perspectives.
Surrealism and Man Ray
Surrealists, like Man Ray in Noire et Blanche, used masks to explore the subconscious, contrasting the animate with the inanimate and questioning reality.
Sidney Nolan and Ned Kelly
Sidney Nolan’s series on Ned Kelly uses Kelly’s metal mask to symbolize rebellion and mythologize the Australian outlaw.
Guerrilla Girls
The Guerrilla Girls used gorilla masks to conceal their identities while protesting sexism and racism in the art world, turning anonymity into a symbol of resistance and empowerment.
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman’s self-portraits use masks and disguises to challenge stereotypes and explore identity fluidity, critiquing societal norms.
Rebecca Horn
Rebecca Horn’s wearable sculptures, like Pencil Mask and Cockatoo Mask, alter interactions and explore intimacy and identity boundaries.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s wrapped installations, such as the wrapped Reichstag, transform familiar structures into mysterious forms, challenging perceptions.
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon’s works often feature grotesque, mask-like figures to convey existential pain and human vulnerability.
Gillian Wearing
Gillian Wearing’s Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry You Will Be in Disguise uses masks to encourage subjects to reveal secrets, exploring identity and societal masks.
Masks and 21st Century Art
Christoph Hefti
Christoph Hefti’s World Mask is a stunning fusion of traditional and contemporary art. This wool and silk rug, hand-knotted in Nepal, combines elements from African, Tibetan, Guatemalan, and Mexican masks into a single hybrid face, reflecting a globalized world, where cultural boundaries blur and diverse traditions merge into new forms of expression.
Gauri Gill
Gauri Gill’s Acts of Appearance series uses masks to explore rural life in India. Collaborating with local artists, she creates masks that depict everyday people and animals. These masks transform mundane scenes into surreal tableaux, highlighting the intersection of tradition and modernity in rural India.
Edson Chagas
Edson Chagas’ OIKONOMOS series critiques contemporary consumer culture by replacing masks with bags covering the artist’s face to symbolize the erosion of individuality in a consumer-driven world.
Kader Attia
Kader Attia’s installations often explore the concept of repair and reconstruction. In The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures, he uses masks to illustrate how different cultures address trauma and healing. The masks, juxtaposed with prosthetics, challenge viewers to consider how societies mend both physical and psychological wounds.
Aneta Grzeszykowska
Aneta Grzeszykowska’s Selfie series uses masks to challenge the digital culture of self-representation. By creating mutilated-looking masks of her own face, she critiques the obsession with self-image and the facade of social media and raises questions about authenticity and the nature of self-portraiture in the digital age.
Masks and On-Chain Art
Foodmasku
Antonius Oki Wiriadjaja, also known as Foodmasku, is a New York City-based artist and activist began the Foodmasku project in April 2020, during the height of the pandemic.
A former Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia, Wiriadjaja has turned his daily meals into an art form, crafting intricate masks and headpieces from edible items. His work explores themes of identity, consumption, and the interplay between art and everyday life. Foodmasku has garnered significant attention, being selected as one of the New York Times’s top Instagram art accounts and expanding into web3 with his gourmet masks.
Wiriadjaja’s Foodmasku project is both aesthetically innovative and delightful while also serving as a medium for expressing pandemic-related anxiety and confusion. Through daily photographs and performances, he turned personal trauma and social challenges into a unique artistic vision, blending humor, creativity, and social commentary. And it’s also been a great way for him to learn how to cook.
Brian Cattelle
Brian Cattelle’s Corrupted Cognition is a series of grotesque black-and-white collage masks using cut-outs from outsized printed portraits to create otherworldly weirdos.
Cattelle’s stated intention is to expose viewers to exactly the kind of thing they instinctively do not want to see, and — rather than desensitize through shock or disgust — invite those put-off viewers to reconsider their unconscious repulsion as the only truly undesirable trait in play.
It is telling that Cattelle — traditionally a black-and-white photographer — chose masks as the medium for this message because, if there is any art form that prompts embodiment of a concept, it would be the mask. The characters of Corrupted Cognition are not 2D freaks and geeks but invitations to see in space and to insert yourself into the consciousness of the other, distorting your current default programming in favor of a widened worldview.
David Henry Nobody Jr.
If Cindy Sherman had been born in a circus, she might’ve turned out like David Henry Nobody Jr., a performance and video artist known for his provocative and often surreal art. His hilarious, visceral live and recorded performances-as-self-portraits use his body as a canvas for striking and sometimes disturbing images.
Using various media such as photography, video, sculpture, costume, and makeup, he explores a wide range of themes, often critiquing society, consumerism, and identity through potent visual puns. His seems to be a medium and approach all his own, and one in which he is equal parts prolific and profound.
Karen Jerzyk
Karen Jerzyk, a New Hampshire-based photographer since 2003, began her career in concert photography before transitioning to portraiture. Her diverse artistic pursuits have expanded into sculpting, painting, set design, and wardrobe design, demonstrating her multifaceted creative abilities. Jerzyk’s work is characterized by a unique blend of surrealism and narrative depth.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she adapted ingeniously, using mannequins and sculpted masks to continue her conceptual photographic work.
