Faces cachées

A museum dedicated to textile memory and creation, the Manufacture de Roubaix brings together the work of twenty-one artists from eclectic cultural backgrounds (France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Benin, Alaska, etc.) around the theme of masks and their many incarnations.
Curated by visual artist and photographer Christine Mathieu, this exhibition presents the public with a selection of perspectives, reinterpretations and artistic appropriations through the lens of an art form undergoing unprecedented renewal: textile art.

Drawing their inspiration directly from the field, or from the collections of ethnographic museums, many artists explore the different functions of masks (transvestism, covering, erasure, etc.) in order to better question their identity and invent their own rituals. Following in the footsteps of Picasso and Giacometti, who in the last century revived their inspiration by drawing on the nourishing sap of Eskimo, African and Oceanic masks, these ‘neo-primitivists’ are in turn succumbing to the seduction of these strange faces with their hypnotic power.

However, there is no ‘cultural cannibalism’ in their poetic and unique approach. For French ‘travelling photographer’ Charles Fréger, as for Beninese artist Léonce Raphael Agbodjelou, the gaze becomes anthropological, cataloguing ritual costumes whose visual beauty rivals their sacred function.

But for visual artist Christine Mathieu (France), the intention is quite different. Blending different time periods and civilisations, disrupting scales and materials, the artist weaves a dreamlike dialogue between a mask belonging to the indigenous peoples of Alaska, preserved at the Château de Boulogne-sur-Mer museum, and a lace headdress from the Mucem (Marseille) collections. This unlikely encounter gives rise to a disturbing artefact that reactivates the ancestral gestures of the anonymous artists who made these objects, while evoking the memory of those who wore them.

Berlin-based German artist Iwajla Klinke creates enigmatic portraits against a black background of masked and costumed children and teenagers, subtly questioning this age when everything is a rite of passage, concealment, even repression. English visual artist Julie Cockburn gives new life to old photographs from the 1940s and 1960s, magnifying them through the prism of collage/camouflage, cut-outs and embroidery. We find the same surrealist vein in the work of Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri. Covered with weavings and embroidery that give them a dreamlike preciousness, his photographs of anonymous subjects acquire a presence that is disturbing to say the least.

Similarly, the disturbing strangeness of ritual costumes finds poetic resonance in the gigantic installations by young French artist and designer Jeanne Vicerial, while absurdity, humour, grotesqueness and terror are evoked in the masks of Czech artist Michael Nosek, as well as in those of textile sculptors Séverine Gallardo (France) and Nathalie Bissig (Switzerland).

Refusing to fall into the trap of a Eurocentric perspective, the curator chose to involve four artists from Alaska’s indigenous communities in this project: Alison Bremner, Da-ka-xeen Mehner, Drew Michael and Jack Abraham. Far from any form of folklore, through their creations these artists reawaken the physical and spiritual connection that continues to link them to their customs and ancestors.

Text by Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter
Art historian, member of AICA

Poster for the exhibition ‘Faces Cachées’ (Hidden Faces), Maurizio Anzeri, Profile black, 2019 © photo: Speltdoorm Studio – courtesy: Galila’s collection, Belgium. Graphic design: Atelier Bien-Vu