LA MASCA (THE MASK)
Performance
Bob Wilson's Watermill Center, NY, 2016
La Masca was presented to the public on March 25, 2016, at the Watermill Center in New York. The project unfolded through three simultaneous events, visually and conceptually connected in a circular narrative: the US premiere of my experimental film Ophelia Did Not Drown, an installation of sculptures inspired by the masks used in the film and produced during the residency, and Ice, a six-hour costume-based performance.
The Masks
The project includes five life-size masks created from casts of my own face in different expressions. Each mold was then reworked using materials that are deeply symbolic within my practice and recurrent throughout my work: red wool, sugar, acrylic nails, newsprint, and gold leaf. The mask becomes both self-portrait and transformation device, an object suspended between vulnerability, ritual, and fiction.
Ice, the Performance
At the center of Ice is a participatory action inviting the audience to engage with three different physical manifestations of the mask. The mask becomes an umbilical cord, a cake to be tasted in a ritual with cannibalistic overtones, and a heavy block of ice that I must hold and support, while the audience is encouraged to melt it with their breath, the warmth of their hands, or even a hair dryer placed on stage. Through these actions, the mask shifts from image to burden, from nourishment to relic, from symbol to living exchange.
Super-Selfie, the Cake Installation
Super-Selfie consists of edible sculptures made from life-size alginate casts of my face in different expressions. Filled with chocolate and cream and covered in white fondant and sugar decorations, the cakes were presented as part of the six-hour living installation connected to La Masca.
The audience was invited to taste them in a ritual that turned the self-portrait into a shared, intimate, and unsettling act of consumption.
Shows
Bob Wilson's Watermill Center, New York - 2016
Credits
Concept and art direction - Francesca Fini
Performing - Francesca Fini, Daniele Sirotti
Website of the project