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  | E-mail: Julia Winter
Saving face, losing face. Loss of face.
How much face can you lose before reaching breaking point? Moment of absolute loss of face, no more face; without posing a rash hypothesis, ceasing to exist. Being here the same as beyond. L'histoire centrale; the muffled hidden face. Death. Magritte 1928. The burka, a perfect example. Another example. Ensor: the masked figures in his works, who if we look closely have taken off their masks, are showing their true faces; without being recognized, as individuals. A paradox. More examples: Zorro, Phantomas, Longhi and the baddies in the Wild West etc. etc. A variety of reasons for, and significances of, hiding one's face. Stop. Start again; loss of face under a dictatorship. Dictatorship of any kind - ideological or religious - results in loss of face. Abolition of differences, uniformity, uniforms, habits and parades; headscarves, beards and the burka again. Eliminating individual ideas. Result - the ideal - collective world picture, a collective memory. We are all familiar with the strategy for bringing this about. Indoctrination, manipulation, suppression and terror. Enforced unconditional fidelity to, and veneration for, the great leader or prophet, the theoretician of this utopia, this Garden of Eden, and if not here on earth, then in the hereafter. | |
Societies dominated by fear, suspicion or credulity. There is little option other than to conform, as indeed people always do on a massive scale. The only resistance possible, however insubstantial: to wear a mask. To hide one's true face. Disguise as a way of limiting loss of face. In other words, hoodwinking Big Brother as best you can, pretending to be a follower. So as to escape and survive. Julia Winter's work expresses the tragedy of the hidden face, the masked figure. Her theme, then, is the portrait, in the classical sense. Portraits of anonymous people, relatives or occasionally a familiar personage such as Mayakovski. Portraits almost always with a large part of the face covered, concealed, behind objects of various kinds. The face, the true face, is hidden out of bitter necessity. So as to limit the loss of face, not to dissolve completely. But as an inevitable result of constantly wearing as a mask the faces are damaged, irreparably. When all is said and done these are portraits of the disfigured face.
Lucassen
Amsterdam
July 2003 |