Reflection on Masks and Their Role in My Practice

Reflection on Masks and Their Role in My Practice

Masks have become silent yet powerful companions in my creative journey—objects that emerge from necessity, transformation, and intuition. Their presence in my work has grown organically, each one marking a turning point or shift in understanding.

The first mask—a dragon with Slavic roots—came from an unexpected place. After Chinese New Year, I found a pile of discarded festive masks by the roadside. I brought a few home, not yet knowing what they might become. Using leftover collage paper from a previous artwork, I reimagined one into a creature—its surface covered like a patchwork quilt. The result was a hybrid beast, shaped from scraps and memory. I didn’t know what to do with it at first. At the time, I was preparing to move abroad and had little space—physically or mentally—for keeping large objects. But something in that mask held me. It connected deeply with my ongoing project about rethinking the past and personal mythology. Slowly, the creature evolved into a horned dragon-goat—a symbolic figure that became the seed of my “Slavic dragon” image.

Later, I used this mask in a short performance and video. A large piece of leftover fabric became the dragon’s body and wings. It moved as I moved, becoming both costume and partner. The result was powerful. I decided to keep the mask. It became the first in what would eventually become a personal archive—a collection of thresholds.

The next series of masks appeared during the development of my project The Frog Princess. This time, I made three, each representing a stage in the transformation of the heroine. As I immersed myself in the theme, I realized that the image of a dancing goddess felt incomplete with only a human face. The mask offered something else—an in-between state, something hidden, more ambiguous and sacred. Again, I used scraps from old collages and red thread as material and symbol. We filmed the performance in a bamboo forest, but the video remains unresolved. It requires further reflection to match the intensity of the process.

During my art residency in Japan, the act of mask-making deepened. I created two lion-dog masks from Japanese newspapers and brochures collected in local museums. Red thread—brought from home—held the pieces together. These masks were made specifically for a site-specific performance and became an essential part of it. This time, everything felt aligned: the process, the material, the place. The masks also worked beautifully in the exhibition that followed. It was the first time I felt complete harmony between mask, gesture, and environment.

After returning to Singapore, I started developing a performance centered around iron deficiency, drawing on mythological figures of hypnosis and his assistants. I created three new masks and imagined a sequence of actions. However, as the work progressed, I began to question its purpose. I couldn’t clearly answer who I was making this for, or why it mattered at that moment. Without clarity, the project was paused—it’s still waiting for the right context.

Most recently, I made a trio of chicken masks to accompany three burlap chicken sculptures I’m bringing to London. These were the most technically complex: shaping the beaks, constructing three different sizes, and adapting the forms to the same rough material I used in the sculptures. I designed them with the idea that my daughters and I might perform together during the exhibition. Whether or not that happens, the masks still hold the presence of that intention. Even standing silently in the space, they carry humor, care, and an echo of the everyday transformed.

Across all of these masks—whether dragon, frog, lion, or chicken—there is a thread. They are not props. They are not disguises. They are vessels—of transformation, of ancestral memory, of layered identities. Some are worn in performance, others remain still. But each one begins with the question: what must be revealed through concealment?