Here we have two interesting pieces by contemporary Oaxaca artist Cecilio Sanchez. They are both masks from a series he created in the mid 1990s.
The way he created these masks was by creating a mold of a persons face that he translated into amate paper. Amate is a beautiful paper that they make in Mexico, it is essentially tree bark that is stripped, boiled, and beaten flat so that it can be used (generally) to paint or write on.
Cecilio has created on number of paintings from amate paper but in this case he used the material to created these wonderful masks. They have both most likely been treated after they were shaped to give them stability and form.
The first mask incorporates much of the imagery and painting techniques you will see in many of the artists works, whereby the negative of the amate paper actually becomes a positive through the subtle use of white paint to bring out the natural forms and shapes found in the amate paper itself. Through this technique Sanchez uses the natural forms of the paper to recreate the image of a tree. So you see this cycle of trees to paper and back to trees again - the positive and negative switch back and forth, transforming into each other.
In the top of the mask you’ll see two bird feathers that come out of the head almost like the horns of an animal. The nose as well was created by some sort of natural found material, maybe a flower or something fallen from a tree.
The second mask by the artist has a little more depth than the first. It incorporates a third eye protruding from the forehead of the face. This imagery (of a protruding eye) can be seen in much of the artists work, such as the painted animal skull we presented in another post. The image is most likely taken from Zopotec mythology, as these are the indignenous people of the artists home state, Oaxaca, Mexico.
The sides of the mask incorporate snake skin, which dangles from either side of the face like elongated ears. Like the first mask there is also a bird feather, but unlike the first, this mask only has one, which protrudes from the chin, held in place by a painted amate paper sheath.
This mask incorporates more color than the first, depicting an image of a woman’s head surrounded by what looks like the sun on the forehead of the mask.
Below the protruding nose of the mask is a painted peripheral view of another nose and moth with a spiral coming out - this is a pre-colombian symbol for language or speech.
Although created in the last decade of the 21st century, both masks have a primordial quality to them, as if they were created centuries ago.