Artists
Jack Black
Skount Garcia
Ashley Johnson
Alicia Piller

The mask has a rich global history. Over millennia, nearly all materials have been employed in the making of masks, including stone, wood, clay, leather, metal, cloth, paper, plastic, glass, paint, and makeup. From the world’s earliest known masks—which date back 9,000 years to prehistoric times before the invention of written language—to Ancient Egyptian, Roman, Mayan, and African death masks; from early 1600s Japanese Kabuki theater masks to modern-day Halloween masks, humans have been compelled to cover their faces, taking on new identities whether human, animal, or spiritual. This deeply rooted impulse and the universal significance of the mask prevail in contemporary culture. 

Behind the Mask calls into investigation the role of the mask in 21st-century artistic explorations and understandings of race, gender, sexuality, mythology, histories, and futures. Behind the Mask brings diverse artists into dialogue with one another, transgressing physical borders and the boundaries between folk art and fine art. The artists in this exhibition were selected based on the centrality of the mask in their unique aesthetic lexicons, as well as for the distinct conceptual perspectives they bring to the mask as a tool for ancestral remembrance and as an icon of contemporary identity politics.