‘Human Mask’ - Pierre Huyghe

The exhibition is called All That Was Solid Melts and is a very well curated by Juliana Engberg. The accompanying description references our 2020 experiences of loneliness, isolation and change - which hasn’t changed a whole lot in 2021 so it’s all still very pertinent right now. The intro for the exhibition says:

Isolation is something we have recently experienced. Like many generations before us we have felt the anxieties of being in the midst of a plague. We have sought ways to counter fear, apprehension, loneliness, separations and have been plunged into private diversions and distractions to wait out time. We have come to realise that all that was solid, everything we counted on, and took for granted – work, leisure, travel, society, even family – might melt away or fracture; that things are mutable, apt to change and that we must adapt if we are to thrive in these new circumstances.

All That Was Solid Melts takes us on a journey from isolation through the multiple anxieties of life and catastrophe, something New Zealanders are particularly familiar with, and along the way offers moments of historical sympathy, solace, and discovery. When, finally, we step beyond the itinerary we will have travelled through metaphors and emotions, realising that we too are simply passing through time, which is but a small moment in a longer plan; that we are but a spec in the cosmos; that things come before and will come after our moment; that we will be deconstructed to reconstruct ourselves.

The works within the exhibition are fascinatingly varied; spanning time, continents and media. They have been brought together from both NZ and International artists; some brought in for the show and some from local collections. It also has a rather lovely free publication to go with it in the form of a newspaper which has lots of information about the works and artists.

There is one work in particular that I didn’t realise was being shown and it’s a piece that I had researched in the past without thinking I’d ever see it. It’s a 2014 video piece by French artist Pierre Huyghe called ‘Human Mask’. Huyghe has been working with various media including site-specific installation, staged scenarios, public intervention and motion-based media since the early 1990s. His work tends towards the enigmatic and unsettling; which is something I certainly enjoy.

The setting for this video piece is a shadowy, semi-derelict restaurant in Japan - which turns out to be in the Fukushima exclusion zone which was created around the damaged nuclear reactor after the huge earthquake and tsunami of 2011. This area is pretty haunting as the houses and businesses were abandoned very quickly and never returned to. Apparently 154,000 residents evacuated the area in a 20km radius of the power plant. I’ve seen a couple of other videos and artworks shot in this area, but Human Mask is my favourite and the one I feel is most haunting.

Walking in on the video you see a small girl with a white mask, long dark hair and a button-up dress moves aimlessly through the rooms as if waiting for the return of parents who have abandoned her. The first moment of cognitive dissonance occurs when you suddenly notice that her arms and legs are covered in long, thick hair; that she walks with a strange gait. It suddenly becomes clear that she is in fact a monkey – a macaque to be precise.

What is she doing in a dress, mask and wig? Why does she walk on her hind legs? Why is she in this abandoned restaurant? Is she a female monkey or am I just assuming that due to the feminine mask and dress? These are all pressing questions!

Watching the film my brain kept flipping backwards and forwards between seeing a human and then a monkey then a human then a monkey. Her movements are beautiful and strange. Sometimes they are so familiar in their humanity – like when she reaches up to gently touch her ‘face’ or ‘hair’. The mask makes her so much like a young girl it feels incongruent when her monkey characteristics make themselves known once again and this is despite the mask itself being so smooth and white that it is like part of a Noh costume. I couldn’t help seeing the unmistakeable similarity between human and primate which was at once disturbing and somehow reassuring? Maybe I felt that because it made humans seem less alone in the world? They are so much like us but at the same time we often treat them so badly.

Is that what is happening here? Is this monkey girl being held against her will? Does the mask bother her? Is the wig itchy? Does she want to leave? As you can see Huyghe’s work evokes SO MANY QUESTIONS!

But that’s what draws me to it.

For those of us interested in art and the otherworldy this is a perfect work to explore. The Fukushima zone is one of those liminal spaces that is suddenly no longer somewhere humans can be and where danger is suggested but cannot be physically seen or felt. Shot with a cold, shadowy greenish tint, the abandoned world feels far from reality. Everything is unnaturally quiet and still except when interrupted by distorted warning announcements over a tinny loudspeaker. The colours of the world are muted and hazy like and old water colour painting. The solitary monkey-girl appears to have some familiar tasks she is carrying out but at the same time unsure of her place - existing in a state of lonely limbo. For me it calls to mind films from my childhood about mutant creatures in radioactive wastelands, or those sad survivors left after nuclear holocaust desperately hoping that there might be another being alive somewhere.

The blurring of the line between human and animal is something I’ve explored researching shamanic practices and the taking on of animal forms for ritual by wearing the pelts, teeth etc of the animal and embodying their movements and character. In this case the monkey is taking on the human form by wearing the ‘skin’ of the human in the form of mask, wig and clothes but she is not doing this with conscious intent and possibly not by choice either.

I wanted to find out who the monkey was and where she was from. It transpires that she is called Fuku-Chan and “works” – for want of a better word – in a restaurant in Kayabuki with another macaque called Yat-chan, where they are tipped with soya beans by the patrons. Apparently they belong to the owner and started imitating him in the restaurant passing out serviettes and bringing beer to guests. They originally starred in a 4 minute YouTube clip of their life in the restaurant which inspired Hweeg to make Human Mask with Fuku-Chan. He says he was fascinated by its weirdness and pathos, and what it says about the way humans and animals relate.

I do struggle with the way the macaque has been turned into this strange little human parody and I worry about her discomfort in the clothes and mask. I wonder a lot whether she has any choice at all. If you look on Youtube you can find the old videos of the monkeys wearing really quite frightening masks in the restaurant and then later videos where the monkeys are serving patrons but are unmasked and just wearing a uniform – which is much less disturbing. I think the idea of covering their faces is disquieting in the same way it is for humans with the added worry that they might be dreadfully uncomfortable. I believe Huyghe made the mask that Fuku-Chan wears in his video work and she was already used to wearing the parody of a woman’s face so I suppose she was ok with it. I’d love to know how Huyghe interacted with her; did he give her any sort of direction? Do monkeys even take direction.

I found an illuminating quote from Huyghe in an article from 2019 in Ocula Magazine. The interviewer Stephanie Bailey asks him why he does what he does, what he believes in and he says:

It has to do with the joy of witnessing moments, or weird situations of synchronicity, sometimes very brief, of something that we did not know could exist. It's about these moments in which I can experience something else than what is, or what I have learned to know; or through which I can escape the condition of knowledge to which I am attached. That we are attached to.

The reason I keep doing what I do lies between an accident and being in love with something, and to have, for a glance, a sense of otherness—an escape from the condition of entrapment, banality, constraints; consensual reality.

So with that I will leave you to think about Fuku-chan, gently touching her white face with her hairy paw, her eyes glinting behind the mask, all alone - haunting her abandoned restaurant.