The Faces We Have Lost at Nitroglobus in Second Life

In March 2014, Dido Haas hosted a joint exhibition by Sina Souza and Sabbian Paine entitled The Masks We Wear, at Nitroglobus Gallery. It formed an exploration of the fact that whether we are aware of it or not, we all wear masks / adopt personas on a daily basis throughout our lives in respect of the people with whom we interact and the places in which we engage with them.

To be honest, I thought I had covered that exhibition in these pages, but alas, my memory is playing tricks on me and it appears not; matters of self, identify and the pressure of society are subjects I find fascinating. Fortunately, that exhibition was celebrated in film and can be found on You Tube.

Also fortunately, and a decade on from The Masks We Wear, Sina and Sabbian have again returned to Nitroglobus Roof Gallery to present a continuance to their original exhibition; one that can be explored and appreciated regardless as to whether or not we saw or remember The Masks We Wear. This is because the new exhibition, which runs through October 2024 and is entitled The Faces We Have Lost, looks at the subject matter through a slightly different lens, as Sina and Sabbian explain in their introduction:

While people still wear masks every day to protect themselves, to hide, to achieve advantages or to slip into another form of existence [as explored through The Masks we Wear], they also lose parts of their real face in the form of innocence, happiness or the freedom, to be the person, who they really are. At a certain point in life we ​​may be more the mask than the real face or the mask has become a face. The question which [then] arises is ‘what is the mask and what is the face?’

– Sina Souza and Sabbian Paine, The Faces We Have Lost

Thus, across the two halls of the gallery, Sina and Sabbian individually and jointly explore the concept of the blurring of true self and projected self (“masks”) and, to my eyes at least, on how society has sought to constrict us through the expectation that is is the mask and not the true self we are expected to wear at all times. In this they are both uniquely and jointly gifted through their ability to use metaphor, surrealism, abstraction and colour to present images that resonate in meaning.

These are pieces which beautifully encapsulate how the use of masks to hide ourselves can be as harmful as it can be – as Wilde observed in The Critic as Artist; A dialogue Part 2 – liberating, largely thanks to the demands of society. So it is that within this exhibition might be found reflections of having to hide personal feelings – hurt, sorrow, loneliness – behind a smile, a quip, and assumed jollity to the point when even when we are in a position to take of the mask, we no longer can; the clown persists, the tears lost, the body as faded and blackened as the moods that grip us.

These are very visual essays on matters with which the vast majority of us will recognise; that no matter what our fears and anxieties must be, society demands we always look and appear “normal”, and that giving vent to those fears – by they of flying or simply another day at the office – is “wrong” and “unnatural”, thus leading us to a point where even when alone, it is the anxieties that replace the mask, becoming us, suppressing who we might once have been – and thus we become numbed to the needs of others, our masks of indifference between defining aspects of who we are, rather than what lies behind them.

And if this sounds dark, perhaps it is; but The Faces We Have Lost is also positive in its message: by shining a light and encouraging us to ask questions about who he are and how we behave and that those around us might be feeling exactly what we are feeling, it might well encourage to be more empathic with ourselves and others.

SLurl Details

• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated Moderate)