Sam Taylor-Wood, Self Portrait Suspended III (detail) 2004, type C photograph. Courtesy of the artist and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London (c) the artist.
Jo Higgins - MCA: Masquerade
30 March 2006
Masquerade at the Museum of Contemporary Art is an extraordinary exhibition. It’s a show that could have easily run with any number of subtitles – “Masquerade: Or Where do we fit in this big anomalous world”; “Masquerade: Who the hell am I?”; or even “Masquerade: Musings on how other people see me”.
However you read it, this is a body of works that ask a lot of questions. Ostensibly about representation and the self in contemporary art (that is its official full title after all), Masquerade is in turn humorous, melancholy, provocative, evocative, difficult, nostalgic and thoughtful. Forgive me the extensive list of adjectives, but in what is undoubtedly one of the MCA’s most comprehensive and interesting exhibitions to date, Masquerade makes an impressive number of interesting and timely comments on the processes – visually, socially and culturally – through which we identify and understand ourselves.
There are both beautiful anomalies and interesting, complementary visual-social parallels between a number of the works on display here and works by lesser-known artists such as Francesca Woodman and Bas Jan Ader more than stand on their own against works by more recognised artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sam Taylor-Wood and Mike Parr.
“Masquerade” is a funny title for this exhibition though as by definition the word suggests a disguise or false outward show and there is nothing false about this exhibition. Certainly the work of some artists – Yasumasa Morimura’s banal photographic tableaux for example – seems a bit frivolous and insincere when compared to artists such as Hannah Wilke, but overwhelmingly the work here is vulnerable, personal and revelationary. There is humour, pathos and empathy and it’s hard not to be moved or tested in some way. There’s much to contemplate. 
The work of American photographer Francesca Woodman is a particular highlight. Her black and white silver gelatin prints are ethereal, haunting and beautiful. The House Series from 1976 shows a naked woman in various ghostly poses throughout a derelict dwelling. In one image her face and hips are obscured by loose wallpaper such that she is all but camoflauged. In another, Untitled, New York 1979, a woman is photographed leaning up against a distressed and patchy wall that reveals the layers of paint, rendering and brick that have covered it over the years. The faceless woman, resting her head on one arm, has the other curled around up against her bare back against which she is holding a silvery spine-like feather. Dressed in several layers of floral fabric reminiscent with wallpaper, the photograph is breathtakingly beautiful. Simple, complex, poignant, Woodman’s photographs suggest an age-old sadness and an undiagnosed longing with its literal and metaphorical layers of meaning. That Woodman took her own life at 22 makes these works all the more affecting.
The video work I’m Too Sad to Tell You by Bas Jan Ader is another similarly melancholic work. Ader disappeared at sea in 1975, shortly after creating this piece, a silent 16mm black and white film of the artist crying, gently rocking and trying to compose himself. Inconsolable but not hysterical, the work, a steady uncut single shot, simply aches and it’s impossible not to wonder what it is that makes Ader too sad to say.
There are countless other examples of affective work here – Hannah Wilke’s photographic documentation of her final days before succumbing to cancer, Samuel Fosso’s private portraits, Sam Taylor-Wood’s exquisite photographs from her Self Portrait Suspended series and Ana Mendieta’s body of works that shrewdly play with hair as a means for self-expression. Other artists of note include New Zealander Ronnie Van Hout and duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster, whose incredible light and sculptural installations have to be seen to be believed.
There is an enormous breadth of experience, opinion and aesthetic execution found in Masquerade and as experience in and of itself, it is both fascinating and deeply moving. It beggars questions about identity, representation, self-expression and perception and rather than suggesting something false or externally constructed it in fact offers the chance to look behind the eponymous mask.
More Information
Masquerade
Until 21 May
Museum of Contemporary Art
Circular Quay West, The Rocks Sydney
Daily 10am to 5pm
Admission Free
Inset images:
Francesca Woodman, Untitled New York 1979. Gelatin silver photograph. Courtesy and (c) George and Betty Woodman
Bas Jan Ader, I'm too sad to tell you (still) 1971. Black and white film. Courtesy Bas Jan Ader Estate and Patrick Painter Editions. (c) Bas Jan Ader Estate
Website: http://www.mca.com.au/
