10.27.2026-02.28.2027
Masks to Unmask
An exhibition featuring 84 works from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas. Through a unique curatorial journey, it explores the universal reasons that drive human beings to wear masks.
With *Masks to Unmask*, the Barbier-Mueller Museum offers a unique experience that transcends conventional classifications.
Here, the works are no longer presented according to their geographic origin or historical period; instead, they engage in a dialogue centered on a fundamental question: Why have human beings, everywhere and throughout history, felt the need to wear masks?
The exhibition brings together 84 masks from a wide variety of regions—Africa, Oceania, Asia, the Americas, and Europe—as well as contemporary creations and objects related to masks or taking on their forms—sometimes even pseudo-masks that challenge the very boundary between mask, appearance, and representation—drawn from cinema, theater, professional fields, and sports.
A Baoulé mask from Ivory Coast and a funerary mask from the island of Java engage in a dialogue with contemporary works by Romuald Hazoumè and a piece by Jean Tinguely, a Noh theater mask, a hockey helmet, a welder’s mask, and even a Commedia dell’Arte mask.
At first glance, nothing connects them.
Image
Masque du jè
Côte d’Ivoire, Yohure, Bois, XXe siècle.
Collecté au début des années 50,
acquis d’Emil Storrer en 1979