{"id":9487,"date":"2025-06-02T16:08:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T21:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=9487"},"modified":"2025-06-06T12:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T17:09:08","slug":"fabulous-exhibition-central-american-masks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=9487","title":{"rendered":"Fabulous Exhibition: Central American Masks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With husband Mike, I visited another marvellous exhibition of about 300 Carnavale masks from the MAPI museum’s huge collection (900) of central and Caribbean masks known as the Claudio Rama Collection of Latin American Masks from across the subcontinent. This exhibition is currently showing in MAPI, the Museo del Arte Pre-Columbino y Indigeno <\/strong>(Museum of Pre-Columbian and Indigenous Art) here in Montevideo.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition takes up the whole floor, flowing from one room to the next, and the masks range from warlike ferocity to highly spiritual (Chistian and indigenous themes) to political-anti colonial statements, and humourous expressions of the natural and especially the animal world – creatures of the air, land and water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This first group really grabbed my attention, with very clever projections of sinister anger and dark evil in each of them… the teeth and eyes are really something!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Using simpler modelling skills, you might think this next group less “professional” as they also use just simple materials, including an embroidered sock with some scrap fabric, hessian from the garden store, and one recycles a dead tatu’s or armadillo’s capapace. But I really admire their creativity:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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These next photos are some of the many wonderful<\/em> animal masks in the collection :<\/p>\n\n\n

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I might go back to re-visit this exhibition again before it closes in a month or two’s time, as it was almost overwhelming! For my Uruguayan readers and anyone who might be in Montevideo in the next month, I urge you to head down to The Old City soon<\/em> and see these terrific exhibitions. It’s open six days a week, but on saturdays there’s less traffic in the city, so plenty of parking across the road from the museum, and they have a nice cafe where you can have a coffee or a snack. The museum’s website https:\/\/mapi.uy\/visita\/<\/a> details opening hours, entry fees, bus transport and current exhibition information. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is currently a call for entries <\/a>open to Uruguayan and international artists to submit our own full mask creations to an exibition later this year, closing date July 10th. I blithely agreed to make one and enter, but as I’ve never made a mask, this will be something of a learning-by-doing-challenge! I’m currently researching ways to do this, and now I think I should just start – entries close July 10th. Something in my mind repeatedly returns to some sinister sueded leather I once bought in a crazy moment – perhaps it needs dripping blood and big sharp teeth – what on earth is trying to emerge here?!!! Shakespeare’s character Hamlet, declared in the play of the same name, \u201cThere is nothing either good or bad<\/em>, but thinking makes it so<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With husband Mike, I visited another marvellous exhibition of about 300 Carnavale masks from the MAPI museum’s huge collection (900) of central and Caribbean masks known as the Claudio Rama Collection of Latin American Masks from across the subcontinent. This exhibition is currently showing in MAPI, the Museo del Arte Pre-Columbino y Indigeno (Museum of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-2t1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9487"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9522,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9487\/revisions\/9522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}