Masks

I had seen the posters advertising the masque display at the Barbier-Mueller Musée but hadn’t really thought about going until one of my writer friends suggested it. The museum is in the Vielle Ville, nestled in an ancient building where Calvin could have tapped his cane on his way to his church.

A noted poet was asked to write a poem for each mask and they came from all over the world. His words captured the essence of each one. Not only were we entranced but we quickly noticed that those from Papua or New Zealand were always elongated, while the oriental ones were rounded. One looked as if it were made of fine gold threads. We grew better at guessing the locations of each.

“Guess where this one is from.” My friend covered the location. It was horrible with horns and vampire style teeth and it looked out of place. I guessed wrong. Ohio 1960s. There were other American masks, a baseball umpire’s, protection for soldiers in combat, one for a diver and another for miners. They looked out of place with those that were for theatre, marriage, religious rituals and carnivals. But we thought about it and maybe our rituals are war and sports.

Neither of us could remember if American Indians had masks, although there were several from Alaska. We thought maybe they could have included carnival masks from New Orleans, but they did not have any of the carnival masks from Venice either.

We’ve decided to create a mask that is symbolic of how we see ourselves for the next time.

A few of the masks can be seen at www.barbier-mueller.ch/eng/home.htm