PIERRE HUYGHE
Human Mask, 2014
Film, colour, sound; 19’
Video installation
Foyer 2, Pelanda
from June 24 to 27 from 5.00pm to midnight
from July 20 to 30 from 11.00am to 12.00am
from July 31 to August 22 from tuesday to Wednesday from 11.00am to 8.00pm, Saturday and Sunday from 11.00am to 10.00pm
Free admission. Restricted numbers apply in compliance with the rules dued to the health emergency
A situation unfolds in the aftermath of Fukushima disaster. In an empty restaurant surrounded by the devastated landscape of the exclusion zone, a female monkey wearing a human mask, left to herself, executes the tasks she had been trained to do, in a purposeless repetition.
The mask recalls the stereotype of young women found in Noh theater or the face of androids. The animal that carries it might be seen as a character, but it does not imitate any human behavior or enact a role.
At other times, it is inoperative, waiting, prone to boredom or anxiety. Confused, the animal state oscillates between conditioning and instinctual drift, between necessity and contingency.
Pierre Huyghe’s works often present themselves as situated networks, a continuity between a wide range of intelligent life forms (biological, technological) and matter that learn, modify and evolve. They are immersive, contingent and constantly changing environments. They are sites of possibility, excess of fiction, indeterminate and indifferent to categories and witnesses.
For several years, Pierre Huyghe’s works investigate alternatives to the Human perspective, thereby giving to the viewers the feeling that they are not always expected, in the manner of Untilled (Documenta 13, 2012) and Untitled (Human Mask) (2014).
Pierre Huyghe born in Paris, lives and works in New York. His work is internationally known and presented in various exhibitions around the world. Huyghe has received a number of awards, including the Nasher Sculpture Prize (2017); Kurt Schwitters Prize (2015); the Smithsonian Museum’s Contemporary Artist Award (2010); the Special Award from the Jury of the Venice Biennale (2001).
Recent exhibitions include UUmwelt, Serpentine Gallery, London (2018);The Roof Garden, Metropolitan Museum, New York (2015). In 2012 -2014, a major retrospective of Huyghe’s work travelled from the Centre Pompidou (Paris) to the Ludwig Museum (Germany) and to Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA). Most recently, he was appointed Artistic Director of the Okayama Art Summit 2019.
Installed in the Foyer 2 of La Pelanda, in the context of re-creatures, Human Mask overturns the order between human and animal, therefore becoming a mirror that questions the self and the other(ness).