Category: Fiction
Rights: All rights available
A Face on a Face highlights the Vaidya Collection, one of the largest, privately held collections of South Asian masks in India. Based on a careful selection of a hundred of the most important masks, this book offers a serious, readable account of their use in ritual and entertainment. Moving away from what the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire once called the “thingification” of native cultures by colonial collecting, the book focuses on the transformation of human beings and their bodies through a deep discussion about masquerade, performers, materials, and social settings. Beginning with an introduction to masks and masquerade, two major sections group masks according to those used primarily in rituals and shrines and those used in performances that occur on the street or in designated spaces. A Face on a Face offers a different way to think about and appreciate the variety of masks in South Asia as they have functioned historically as well as in the contemporary.
The author: Annapurna Garimella