Wir Sind Masken

The mask, the "artificial face", was part of man's earliest artistic production; over time, it served as an instrument and a medium in the process of creating life and/or culture in many different civilisations: in the cult of the dead/of memory/of ancestors, in rites of passage and rebirth, as a fundamental form of expression in mystery plays and theatre, as part of courtly pageants, but ultimately also as a form of protection, as camouflage, and much more.
New about this presentation - apart from the breadth of its timeline and cultural frame of reference - is its attempt to classify masks according to the function they served, masks both from European and from non-European cultures that until now were separated both conceptually and in museum presentations, and to relate them to each other.