Playing New Roles Behind the Mask: San Luis Potosi Diary # 2

This is not just CosPlay.

These are the origins of the Universe, the idea of duality, the personification of diety, the reverence for the lifeless, the mourning of loss, and the paralyzing fear of the satan. These weighty themes and other people have often been tackled via masks, costumes, and dance in rituals dating back again to 3000 B.C. in Mexico.  During the Pre-Hispanic period, folks turned gods and devils, eagles and jaguars – by donning masks. 

Carrying a mask in ritual or celebration, one particular could believe powers about the harvest, impact associations, endeavor to sway overall health results and even forecast the long term. Later, pagan methods ended up folded into western spiritual techniques to gain new adherents (and donations) to the church, fortifying their value in the histories re-told to future generations.

The masks we noticed this 7 days at the Nationwide Museum of the Masks (Museo Nacional de la Máscara) in San Luis Potosi were being formidable, frightening, and fascinating – and you are guaranteed that there is hardly ever a uninteresting minute as you walk from room to area. The mechanics of artifice and imagination summon some of the strongest emotions and associations possibly simply because of their human scale. Irrespective of whether built for “Las Mascaradas” or in later generations at “El Carnaval” 1 realizes that sophistication and talent can be uncovered in the most intricate parts with worthwhile supplies and those people of the roughest reduce or bluntest software of color.

Housed in a colonial palace in the attractive historic centre of the metropolis that was declared a World Heritage Web site by UNESCO in 2010, amazingly this museum presentation appears to have lacking texts, holes where objects after ended up, and darkened lights – detracting from the grand history of masks in common, and Mexico’s job in certain. A remaining section devoted to masks worn by wrestling performers acknowledged as luchadores is a missed prospect to link the ancient with the contemporary and shell out homage to the strong effect and importance these masks have had in several media and on fashionable imaginations.

General the masks and costumes are very remarkable, drawn from areas and tongues throughout the region and generations. Looking at these masks in this grand former dwelling presents guests a better appreciation for the function artists have performed in communicating the sacred and profane, the rituals of celebration and mourning, the development of drama and fantasy, and the generation of traditions.

For additional information about The Museo Nacional de la Mascara, simply click Below.

See Mexican Avenue Artist SANER, whose work is tremendously motivated by the mask generating/donning traditions of Mexico: