A SHOUT INTO THE SKY: MÁSCARAS DE ALAMBRE
ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE APRIL 2021
Máscaras de Alambre is a project created in 2017 in Mexico City by the great artists and friends Pablo Cobo and David Herrera. I met them for the first time while filming a video for Sonido Gallo Negro where their masks would appear exposing the other face of the human being, that duality that lives and exists within all of us. I was fascinated with their art not only because of the pieces themselves, but because of the shadows that they created, exposing something else, a certain type of soul that inhabited the work.
David and Pablo started Máscaras de Alambre almost by divine chance, while they were at a dinner party David began to play with the wire of a wine cork, he made a little face and showed it to Pablo. Both were amazed to see that a metal could express so much, in so many ways. The powerful feeling of transmitting that emotion was how this roller coaster of creativity, expansion and wire started.
That deep connection with a material and the process involved in transforming it is so similar to the transformation we experience as humans. We take a straight, hard, amorphous wire, and then with movement, with turns, cuts, strength, and dedication we transform it and weave a new figure, a new “self”. Like the human being, wire has infinite possibilities of transformation.
We were honored to host them in April for an art residency, where they created an incredible, gigantic piece consisting of eighteen faces, each one getting bigger and slowly opening their mouths in a scream. It was very interesting to see them in action, working in such a large format that required not only their hands but their entire body. As the multiple faces of the installation were completed, it was incredible to inhabit each one of them. The braided wire formed an anatomical structure that resembles muscles, which we have after skin. It was as if you could see yourself upside down, first skin and then skull, an overlap that made me think of death as the only way to live. This punctual and volatile feeling that art generates is what keeps the world moving, that cathartic and experiential force that pushes to create in order to transform.
I invite you to see through the lens of Hugo Alvarez, another piece of art generated from this residency, a small taste of what goes on inside the minds of Máscaras de Alambre.
Thanks to @hugophotomx for capturing this moment, and @artep33 for helping us with EVERYTHING.