Face masks have become inseparable components of one’s visage. Meant to ward off the novel coronavirus, they can defamiliarize even close acquaintances. They are like the “masks” — false faces — humans slip off and on instinctively during their interactions with one another. We need them for survival. Aditya Basak created a series of mixed media works, reflecting on the ability of a mask (made by human artifice) to conceal one’s true self/face. These were displayed in an online exhibition titled Known Unknown (January 11-31) organized by Aakriti Art Gallery.
Masks were created by ancient cultures for use in dance, theatrical productions and other performances to represent a particular type of mood. Some have a deep religious significance. Warriors wore masks with fearsome expressions writ large on them to scare away enemies. Scarecrows do the same. Superheroes/heroines of comics wear masks to hide the human frailties their real faces could give away.
The expressions painted on Basak’s masks cannot be pinpointed for they are fluid in nature. They are nuanced and ambiguous, and add to the mystery of these face covers. The dark hollows of their eyes enhance the enigma of these mainly monochromatic works that remind one of those statues with roving eyes in Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. Bearing the impressions of newspapers, maps, rubber stamps, a deluge of words and the world about us on their surface, some of the masks look positively sinister for they approximate the images of aliens in films and popular fiction. Some represent troubled states of mind like the famous image from Bergman’s Persona of a single visage composed of the left and right halves of two actresses’ faces. Basak’s false faces are not modelled on masks of any country in particular, and although most are painted full-frontal, they are lit from various angles, the chiaroscuro heightening the drama. Impassive and impenetrable though these masks are meant to be, it is often difficult to distinguish them from real human faces animated by emotions. The conundrum that viewers face is very real though.
