Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present Thus masked, the world has a language, a group exhibition exploring the masquerade and mask traditions across the African diasporas in Mexico, the Caribbean, and the United States. Across the exhibition, masks are activated forms—a vessel through which truths can be expressed, history can be questioned, and memory can be reactivated. The exhibition will feature works by gallery artists Raphaël Barontini and Lorraine O’Grady, alongside invited artists Nick Cave, Ebony G. Patterson, Darryl Richardson, and Tavares Strachan.
Through lens-based practices, collage, and sculpture, the artists engage the performative, political, and intergenerational dimensions of masks that bridge geographies and social histories. As a threshold between the visible and the invisible, the archival and the contemporary, African diasporic masquerades are rituals that summon the essence of nature, from the bush and swamp to animals, spirits, foreigners, witches, the past itself, or ancestors —to allow spiritual presence to be embodied for communal and social transformation.
As masquerade culture spans between and beyond ritual, carnival, and street processions; ceremoniously the mask becomes a conduit: a threshold to the divine, a channel for the ancestral realm, or a vessel for collective memory. Darryl Richardson and Raphaël Barontini focus on the intersection of communal erasure and recovery, using partial concealment as a strategy to counter erasure and assert diasporic lineage. Their meditations on systemic erasure lead to Entourage from the Fambily series (2010) by Ebony G. Patterson, and sculpture by Nick Cave, that adorn figures whom transform the masked body into a site of reemergence and historical agency. Like Barontini, Tavares Strachan reclaims the archive through collage—but where Barontini gestures toward partial visibility, Strachan leans toward total concealment. Self Portrait: Loyalty to the Past (Blue Guro Mask) 2023, emphasizes loyalty to ancestral heritage while addressing the metaphysical complexities of identity and memory, making the mask a statement on resilience and continuity within the African diaspora.
Similar to traditional masks, Cave’s Soundsuits are constructed with everyday materials—twigs, sequins, fur, wire. These suits conceal the body entirely, freeing the wearer from assumptions tied to race, class, or gender. Within the context of masquerade, O’Grady’s concealment in Announcement of a New Persona (2020) becomes a vessel of deflection and power—resisting legibility while confronting the demands of visibility and representation. Both Cave and O’Grady activate concealment as a choreography of refusal and renewal.
In Thus masked, the world has a language, concealment is not absence—it is redirection, resistance, and transformation. From object to action, the mask’s power lies in its ability to be worn, danced, and inhabited—activating knowledge that is both embodied and inherited. As Lorraine O’Grady posits, through Announcement of a New Persona (2020), what truths emerge through concealment?
Thus masked, the world has a language, will be on view at Mariane Ibrahim Chicago until August 23, 2025.
