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

This isn’t just CosPlay.

These are the origins of the Universe, the idea of duality, the personification of diety, the reverence for the dead, the mourning of loss, and the paralyzing concern of the satan. These weighty themes and other individuals have regularly been resolved via masks, costumes, and dance in rituals dating back to 3000 B.C. in Mexico.  In the course of the Pre-Hispanic period of time, folks grew to become gods and devils, eagles and jaguars – by donning masks. 

Putting on a mask in ritual or celebration, a single could presume powers around the harvest, affect associations, try to sway health outcomes and even forecast the long run. Afterwards, pagan techniques were folded into western religious practices to get new adherents (and donations) to the church, fortifying their relevance in the histories re-informed to foreseeable future generations.

The masks we noticed this week at the National Museum of the Masks (Museo Nacional de la Máscara) in San Luis Potosi have been formidable, terrifying, and interesting – and you are confirmed that there is never a dull second as you walk from home to area. The mechanics of artifice and creativity summon some of the strongest feelings and associations maybe mainly because of their human scale. No matter if produced for “Las Mascaradas” or in later hundreds of years at “El Carnaval” one realizes that sophistication and skill can be revealed in the most intricate parts with precious components and those of the roughest cut or bluntest software of colour.

Housed in a colonial palace in the stunning historical center of the metropolis that was declared a Earth Heritage Web site by UNESCO in 2010, amazingly this museum presentation appears to have missing texts, holes where by things as soon as ended up, and darkened lights – detracting from the grand historical past of masks in typical, and Mexico’s role in certain. A closing part devoted to masks worn by wrestling performers acknowledged as luchadores is a missed option to link the historical with the up to date and shell out homage to the potent effects and importance these masks have had in various media and on fashionable imaginations.

Total the masks and costumes are amazingly outstanding, drawn from regions and tongues across the place and generations. Viewing these masks in this grand previous home provides site visitors a higher appreciation for the position artists have performed in communicating the sacred and profane, the rituals of celebration and mourning, the creation of drama and fantasy, and the development of traditions.

For a lot more data about The Museo Nacional de la Mascara, simply click In this article.

See Mexican Street Artist SANER, whose operate is drastically affected by the mask earning/sporting traditions of Mexico: