Game of Masques

Game of Masks

Game of masks is the imposing title with which one is confronted in Irina’s paintings.

Accustomed to long stays abroad, she retains a fascination for the ancestral practice of the NAGA tribe from two years spent in India. Following the cycles of the seasons, a man having completed all the “tests of worthiness” will begin a new life cycle by obtaining a head, which he later transforms into a mask. Do not be alarmed however, the artist has no morbid appeal. She is interested in the form of these immobilized faces, rather than the symbolic value of the ritual, as described by the ethnologist. The maintenance of life through these skulls, the continuous renewal and above all, the transformation of the natural situation into something of cultural value, where the biological becomes ornamental.

… initially, she bound the design to the architectural and anthropomorphist space, which was her first medium. She then focused only on the balance within the canvas. She respected her initial layout, using compositions of three faces. Finally, after she appropriates its traits, the artist freed herself from the model, to play with an infinite number of combinations, changing size and texture, superposing the flat and voluminous forms, varying the colors or even using photographs…… If you want to discover the artist’s true obsession, in the face of such a wealth of works, it is necessary to carefully study, not just the layout, but also what remains unchanged in these paintings – the expression of the masks. The eyes? Empty almonds outlined with rings, worked into the plaster by an assured hand. She had to read and understand the immobility, the static attitude of these masks that do not aim to reproduce the least feeling. Faces fixed with immutable features, a kind of trap where an indistinct force is born. Certainly, these skulls resemble one another, because they have the same symbolic base and content. This is why the game seems so easy, infinite: the masks are only a powerless and formal method of communicating.

Raphaelle Renken, 2000