This accessory originally reserved for the domain of the religious continues, despite its sanitary function, to mobilize our contemporary imaginaries.
by Emmanuelle Picaud
It has become an indispensable equipment of our wardrobe. Blue, pink or patterned, the mask is an accessory that we have, by the force of things, adopted on a daily basis and that we associate with the pandemic of Covid-19. However, the theater of antiquity to high couture podiums, through the operating halls, its port has covered various cultural and religious meanings during history, which do not prove so far away from our Contemporary uses.
In the historical level, it remains difficult to know when back the origins of the mask. If parietal paintings in Paleolithic show masked men, the oldest masks, found in the caves of Judea in Israel, daters of nine thousand years. They could be made from different materials: fabric, wood, leather, metal … Over the thread, these objects shaped by man could have a disinhibition, celebration but also fight against evil spirits and , like our surgical masks, protection against diseases.
“I remember having seen one day a mask used by the Iroquois in the dark red color and intended to deceive the entourage or spirits. The coating was used to treat nose bleeding,” says Bernard Vialettes, Professor Emeritus of medicine and author of the book a clinical look at the masks (the Harmattan, 2020). The echo between the blood and the red color of the object allowed, as pointed out by the author, to offer “a receptacle of the disease to better release the suffering man”. Other masks were able to have therapeutic functions, such as the demon Maha Kola Sannya in Sri Lanka, which alone represented the demonic heads of eighteen distinct deities, each specific to a disease.
Exorcism and folklore
Despite the diversity of uses and representations, the sacred function of the mask is found in most ethnicities and primitive civilizations, which wearing it during their rituals. In Africa, the carriers could perform dances by exhibiting faces of spirits or animals, mounted on their stilts. In Asia, the Nuo Theater has used the purpose of exorcism, to expel the demons judged responsible for the diseases and misfortunes of society. In Europe finally, the mask has long been associated with the Sacred, especially among the Greeks and the Romans, who feared during the religious holidays dedicated to the god Bacchus.
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