Recognizing the Mask

“Recognition” is like a mirror that can be read in two directions. The nature of the mask lies in this dual interpretation: it reveals and unmasks itself, hides and shows itself, protects and exposes itself. Two opposing forces coexist within it: that of disguise and that of discovery. This tension opens up a space where what something is and what it appears to be intertwine.

This exhibition celebrates the tenth anniversary of Espacio KB. For this occasion, Angelina Guerrero (curator and director of Espacio KB) brought together ten artists, a symbolic gesture that engages with the history the space has been building.Some of the artists have exhibited at Espacio KB and share a relationship with the space—one of affection and resonance—that has developed over time; others were invited because their practices expand the questions surrounding identity, ritual, artifice, and metamorphosis.

The diversity of materials—glass, wax, fique, plaster, ceramics, wood, palm, earth, milk, honey, textiles, and video—reflects the conceptual breadth of the mask as an object, gesture, interface, and contemporary fiction.

The common thread running through the exhibition is an essential question: What happens when we decide not to be recognizable?

In a world saturated with images, algorithms, and facial recognition devices—where the face becomes data, surveillance, or an avatar—being more than just a single face is an act of resistance. The plurality of being—its transition between characters and gestures—invites us to think of ourselves as malleable surfaces: bodies that tell their stories from a place of indeterminacy.

In this context, the mask becomes an aesthetic and political choice: deciding how to be seen—or not to be seen at all. Distorting oneself, cross-dressing, hiding, or embodying another figure opens paths toward that which is neither fixed, nor binary, nor classifiable. In doing so, ritual, mythical, political, and popular resonances are activated.

Masks belong to a living culture. They are a threshold between the human and the animal, between the personal and the collective, the visible and the hidden. Their power lies in opening up a space of ambiguity that challenges dominant categories and aligns with post-identity aesthetics.

Claude Lévi-Strauss analyzed masks as systems of social transformation, not merely as aesthetic objects. What is essential is not what they represent, but the oppositions they establish among themselves, because it is in these differences that the deep structures of a culture emerge.

A mask transforms both the wearer and the observer. It constructs social reality while simultaneously representing it.

In this exhibition, the masks—whether zoomorphic, digital, ritual, intimate, or technological—are also the result of a present in which identity and artifice blend in layers of time, desire, and fiction.

I am not a robot

This statement runs through the exhibition and challenges us from within our techno-nature.

Can we today distinguish what is a mask and what is not? Do cameras, algorithms, or AI systems recognize a “true face”? Or can we hack ourselves to become invisible to the logic of control?

“Covering oneself can be a way of saying more. Not being recognized, a way of questioning everything.”

The exhibition brings together practices that understand the mask not as an object, but as a way of being—a territory where the human, the ancestral, the digital, and the animal merge and transform.

Santiago Lemus, who has collaborated with Espacio KB on projects such as *Hasta que la sangre sea polen* and *Los amarillos*, presents *Prosopon*. The Greek root of “mask” and the origin of “person,” serving as the starting point for a radical premise: “We are not on the earth; we are the earth.” In his work, genealogy unfolds as living layers, like masks inherited from his mothers. He uses milk and honey, through which mother and son mutate into shifting faces. Generations appear as masks of the earth itself: gestures that repeat and transform until the person becomes a mask.

Following her exhibition *Museo sin oro* at KB, Nor@ Renaud continues to explore the symbols of the present. In her work *Silicon Glyphs*, she uses iconography from the digital world to create a pendant-mask reminiscent of indigenous ritual artifacts. Silicon—a material found in the Earth’s crust and the foundation of digital technology—articulates a hybrid aesthetic between the ancestral and the cybernetic, as if it were a ritual ornament born in the Internet age.

Miguel Cárdenas is participating in KB for the first time with *Ancestro viviente* (Living Ancestor), a totem-mask that brings together the zoomorphic, the festive, and the ceremonial. The piece breathes like an organism that evokes memories of American rituals, carnivals, and protective figures. It is a living artifact that moves between myth and the present.

*I am not a robot*, by Daniel Jiménez—an artist who has previously exhibited at Espacio KB—transforms an everyday gesture into art: confirming that we are human in order to access a digital platform. This action, transformed into a mask, becomes a mirror of contemporary algorithmic control and leaves an open question: Who decides today what it means to be human?

Following her exhibition *Rosana Tijeras – Laboratoria Peluquería*, Rosana Escobar participates in this show with a work from 2018. In *Bisonte*, fiber becomes fur, body, and texture to bring to life a woven animal that embodies mimesis and camouflage. The mask emerges as a second skin: protection, desire, and communion with nature.

Danielle Kovalski Monsonego, who exhibited at Espacio KB several years ago, draws on wax masks to create *Teatro familiar*, a piece that evokes the faces of ancestors preserved in domestic halls. Surrounding her, faceless puppets rest in silent anticipation, ready to take on new identities. Her work questions social “personality”—that persona we assume through desire, inheritance, or imposition.

Salvador Jiménez-Flóres presents *Kutha / Máscaras*, consisting of three pieces: *La Jefa*, *La Bolsa*, and *Huerca*. Woven from palm leaves, the masks display their festive, ritual, and spiritual power. These objects elevate the material to the status of a living thing: they preserve gesture, memory, and spirit.

María Roldán Ruiz presents *Se me perdió un ojo*, a set of six glass heads based on drawings by her daughters. Suspended on colored strings, these figures oscillate between the ghostly and the playful, reminding us that the mask also belongs to the realm of childhood, where imagination and fiction shape the world. A profound insight emerges in her work: the body is visible; the soul is not. The soul is material, but made of a different substance—a subtle matter that eludes the eye. Thus, identity is conceived as a form of fragility, but also as a force of invention.

Mateo López, invited for his interest in processes of construction and in playing with the everyday, presents *Parrot Mask*. The totem, whose wooden beak resembles that of a parrot or a condor, incorporates biosafety goggles that expand the notion of the mask, the artifact, and the craft. Here, the animal and the technical, the artisanal and the industrial, converge as an interface between worlds.

Camilo Pachón presents *Soy un monstruo* (I Am a Monster), a video constructed from collages in which his own face is distorted, concealed, and multiplied through digital masks. The piece unfolds as a carnival of transforming bodies, a play on the plurality of being. In an age of filters, avatars, and social media, Pachón poses a unsettling question: How do we know that the face we show corresponds to our true essence? His work evokes a festive sensibility that considers disguise, ritual, celebration, and simulation as contemporary forms of identity.

It is the resonance within each of these masks that this exhibition seeks to make audible. A transition between the ritual and the technological, between the natural and the artificial, where identity becomes metamorphosis.

To recognize the mask is to accept that behind every face lie many others. And it is only in metamorphosis—in the oscillation between the visible and the hidden—that the self finds its true freedom.

Curated by: Angelina Guerrero

Espacio KB

Nov. 1 – Dec. 5, 2025