Who Am I? Who Are You?

Throughout the ages, the mask has protected, projected and concealed our identities. Now, a new wave of young artists are creating ones that speak to our uncertain era.

- Lynn Yaeger

The impulse to transform one’s visage is an elemental one, practiced by every culture on earth. From the African continent to the Inuit societies of North America to the islands of Oceania, ancient peoples used materials like mud, wood, bone, feathers and metals to craft masks made for everything from conjuring rain to guiding the dead into the spiritual realm. Aside from ceremony, masks have also long had practical implications: Think of the medico della peste, or “plague doctor” mask, with its long, birdlike beak, which was worn in the 17th century by physicians hoping to protect themselves from the Black Plague, and which became one of the enduring visual images from that time, a metaphor for the facelessness of death itself.