Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cNo one cared who I was until I put on the mask.\u201d The line from Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises (delivered by Tom Hardy as Bane), highlights a paradox. \u201cThrough the act of hiding you\u2019re making yourself much more noticeable,\u201d says the artist James Merry, who began making facial ornaments for Bj\u00f6rk to wear on stage a decade ago. \u201cThat\u2019s the tension that makes them powerful, the weird conflict at the heart of masks.\u201d Artists have long played with this duality, from the 20th-century painter Leonor Fini, with her feathery or feline adornments, to the paper bags made by the New Yorker cartoonist Saul Steinberg from 1959 to 1962, to the 21st-century hip-hop artist MF Doom (aka Daniel Dumile). There are masks of augmentation and adornment, such as Merry\u2019s intricate and otherworldly creations, or of secrecy and concealment, like the renegade balaclavas worn by Russian punk group Pussy Riot, or country star Orville Peck\u2019s fringed bandit-style face covering. \u201cThe minute you put the mask on, you become someone else,\u201d says K\u00e4the Kollwitz, a founding member of the feminist-activist art collective Guerrilla Girls (their work is at Hannah Traore Gallery in New York until 29 March). Talking over Zoom in a gorilla mask, Kollwitz \u2013 who takes her pseudonym from the early 20th-century German painter \u2013 explains how the furry store-bought disguises have shielded the members\u2019 identities since they first started calling out art-world discrimination in 1985. \u201cWe put our first posters up; all hell broke loose; and suddenly people wanted to see us,\u201d she recalls. When one member misspelled \u201cguerrilla\u201d as \u201cgorilla\u201d, they settled on the primate get-up. \u201cIt became our trademark,\u201d she says. \u201cWithout necessarily meaning to, we created a\u00a0Guerrilla Girls persona.\u201d In the past 40 years, more than 60 women artists have been part of the collective. \u201cWe were afraid that our careers would be hurt by our activism,\u201d says Kollwitz. \u201cWe wanted to protect ourselves.\u201d A number of members have since gone on to reveal their true identities, \u201cbut what\u2019s great is it just doesn\u2019t matter\u201d, says Kollwitz. \u201cThe masks are stronger than going unmasked. It empowers you.\u201d A mask has often been a ploy for creating intrigue. Peck, who has steadfastly worn face coverings as a singer since 2017, has said that his mask-wearing is \u201cbringing back that trope of the outlaw and mystery\u201d; Irish rapper DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed, of Belfast hip-hop group Kneecap, is also distinctive for his tricolour balaclava in the colours of the Irish flag. Originally a teacher, he first wore it on stage so as not to be recognised by students at his \u201cvery Catholic\u201d secondary school, but has acknowledged its potency as a symbol.Fiont\u00e1n Moran, curator of the upcoming Tate Modern retrospective of the Australian artist Leigh Bowery, pinpoints the tradition of Venetian carnival costume, which dates back to medieval times. \u201cIt creates a moment when society can do things they\u2019re not normally allowed to do,\u201d he says. \u201cLeigh embodies that spirit. Masks are a way of existing in another realm.\u201d After studying music then fashion in Melbourne, Bowery moved to London in 1980 and became a fixture of the city\u2019s underground nightclub scene. He began making and wearing his own flamboyant outfits, treading the line between performance art, club culture and fashion design. He modelled for Lucian Freud, collaborated with choreographer Michael Clark and couturier Mr Pearl, and was referred to by his friend Boy George as \u201cmodern art on legs\u201d. The Tate show (running from 27 February to 31 August) features many of his infamous looks such as Plastic Surgery \u2013 created with pairs of tights padded with foam and painted with make-up \u2013 or outr\u00e9 A-line dresses that covered the face and head. \u201cPeople often refer to them as Mexican wrestling masks,\u201d says Moran, \u201cbut I think they are more likely connected to sexual gimp masks.\u201dManipulating one\u2019s appearance is often part of the thrill. In the 1920s, French surrealist Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) photographed herself in guises that challenged gender stereotypes. Eighty-five years later, Cahun\u2019s androgynous take on a bodybuilder was recast in\u00a0a self-portrait by British artist Gillian Wearing, in which\u00a0she also holds up a mask of her own face. Since the\u00a01970s, Cindy Sherman has created and photographed more than 600 personas, first through make-up and costume, later with elaborate prosthetics. The exhibition Masquerades at the M+ museum in Hong Kong (until 5 May) pairs Sherman\u2019s early work with images by another\u00a0shapeshifting artist: Yasumasa Morimura, who adopts the likeness of both historical figures and celebrities in his self-portraits. \u201cYou could say that Leigh was always wearing a mask,\u00a0because he was always performing on some level,\u201d\u00a0says Moran. \u201cAlmost every person I\u2019ve spoken to who\u00a0knew him well said that their favourite look of his\u00a0was the everyday one. He would wear a bad wig or tape up one eyebrow so they looked wonky. We\u2019ve christened it hardcore normcore, but it speaks to his constant hiding\u00a0of his real self.\u201d Where masks begin and end is ever more complicated in the\u00a0age of social-media selfies and photo filters. Wearing first\u00a0began exploring the theme\u00a0in the 1990s, making her\u00a0first masked portrait in 2000. It\u2019s a stark and uncanny portrayal: the Turner Prize-winning artist\u2019s face is layered with a semi-realistic silicone mask cast in her own image, her eyes beneath staring directly at the viewer. \u201cI remember seeing a scene in a children\u2019s TV programme in the \u201970s where a girl was wearing a smiling mask at a party,\u201d she recalls of an early inspiration. \u201cAll her friends read from this that she was enjoying herself, until someone lifted the mask and she was crying. It made me realise that is what people do in real life, just without a physical mask.\u201d Wearing has continued to photograph herself in ever more lifelike disguises: as younger versions of herself, as members of her family, and as artists such as Georgia O\u2019Keeffe and Andy Warhol. At her current show at Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples (Art Lovers, in which she is showing alongside her husband, Michael Landy, until 12 April), a series of new self-portraits see her morph into Italian actresses Monica Vitti and Anna Magnani \u2013 \u201cwho are used to being other people and wearing their faces as masks\u201d \u2013 and also directors Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. \u201cWhen I put on their masks there is a shift in how I hold myself,\u201d says Wearing. \u201cIt is a form of acting in itself.\u201d Merry began creating adornments for Bj\u00f6rk in 2015, when she had just created the Vulnicura album in the wake of her break-up with artist Matthew Barney; his\u00a0stage pieces acted like a veil to her vulnerability. His\u00a0designs, often inspired by natural forms, can summon surreal sea creatures or supernatural plantlife, and have evolved through fabric and silversmithing into \u201calien-looking resins\u201d and digital masks, released as filters to wear on Instagram. He continues to dream up creations for Bj\u00f6rk, but he also makes masks for himself. \u201cIt\u2019s bizarre because I don\u2019t really have any interest in being a performer,\u201d he says. His latest art project, designed to be exhibited, references archaeological Iron Age masks worn by priests. \u201cI\u2019m kind of making myself, very loosely, into my imagined versions of the priests at different sacred sites in England.\u201d On stage a mask can be a device for overcoming inhibitions. It\u2019s a way \u201cto become your true self\u201d, says Goatman, the stage name of the drummer of Swedish psych band Goat. \u201cA mask makes you feel connected with the energy that you truly are,\u201d he says. \u201cYour inner vision of you. Or maybe your best self.\u201dFor others, it\u2019s just part of the joy of dressing up. Fini, who moved in the same circles as Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dal\u00ed, once said: \u201cI have always loved to dress up in costume. There\u2019s this aspect of glorifying oneself, of becoming larger than life. I liked to go [to masked balls] solely to make an entrance, to be intoxicated with myself for a few moments.\u201d Whether a mask reveals or conceals, it\u2019s rarely the end of the story. Moran is sceptical, for instance, of the idea often expressed by people that Freud\u2019s portraits of Bowery, showing the latter nude and unmasked, show us the \u201creal Leigh\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s maybe a little naive,\u201d he says. \u201cThe idea of the \u2018real person\u2019 is maybe always a mystery.\u201d Cahun, nearly a century ago, seemed to agree. \u201cBeneath this mask, another mask,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI will never be finished removing all these faces.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cNo one cared who I was until I put on the mask.\u201d The line from Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises (delivered by Tom Hardy as Bane), highlights a paradox. \u201cThrough the act of hiding you\u2019re making yourself much more noticeable,\u201d says the artist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":215254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-215253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215255,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215253\/revisions\/215255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}