Mascaras - The power of the mask

Traditional Sardinian masks, stunning costumes and timeless rituals, lives and stories told through a series of portraits highlighting the extraordinary power exerted by masks on people.

The word “person” is the key point of this photographic research. Il takes origin from the Latin phrase per sonar: “to play through”. Persona was also the name given to wooden masks used by theater actors. My project focuses on traditional Sardinian masks and on people who wear them following ancestral rituals of local populations. Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with a very old and complex history. While the costs were easier to reach for conquerors, the up-country has been preserved from the influence of other civilizations. Here, millenary rituals related to the cycles of seasons still survive to the present day.

The iconic power exerted on the wearer by the mask is the subject of this photographic research conducted in more than 20 villages, for more than 60 traditional masks, through the heart of Sardinia. The focus of my work is not on the macroscopic side of performances, but on the most intimate part of an intense and profound ritual involving exclusively the mask and the wearer. That is why I chose to portray people by abstracting them from the ritual context in order to highlight the subjective relationship between person and mask.

After the first session, people have been photographed in their ordinary clothes, back to their everyday lives. This second series emphasizes the power of masks: the same people looking strong and confident in their previous disguise now reacted in a completely different way towards the camera, showing shyness and insecurity.

Mascaras is about people giving up their individuality behind the masks to become timeless beings belonging at once to the past and to the future. All unknowingly subjected to a power older and stronger than History. The power of the mask.