MASKS AND MYTHS IN A LIVING MUSEUM

Lucia Picaro, member of the My-Ma Scientific Committee representing Belgium, talks about her experience as a mask creator and performer, exploring the living relationship between mask, myth, body and landscape.

MASKS AND MYTHS IN A LIVING MUSEUM
Artistic Research at the Domain & Royal Museum of Mariemont, Belgium

During the artist residency Parcorps at the Domaine & Royal Museum of Mariemont in Belgium, I developed an artistic research exploring the living relationship between mask, myth, body and landscape.

The domain of Mariemont is a unique cultural site where museum collections, historical sculptures and a vast natural park coexist. The museum houses rich collections ranging from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome to Asian civilizations, including numerous sculptural works, ritual objects and masks that testify to the symbolic and mythological imagination of humanity. The park itself is populated by monumental sculptures, old trees and architectural remains, forming an open-air landscape of memory
and imagination.

Rather than being a closed institution, the museum functions as a living ecosystem where heritage, nature and contemporary creation continuously interact. Walking between exhibition rooms, sculptures and forest paths became part of the artistic process – a journey between cultural memory,
material presence and sensory experience.

This project investigates how ancient myths preserved in museum collections can resonate within contemporary artistic practices and how mask-making can become a tool for reconnecting with inner awareness and ecological sensitivity.

Clay Mask – Memory and Inner Transformation The first artistic direction took shape as a clay mask, modeled directly from my own face. Clay carries the memory of the earth, archaeological layers and fragile transformation. Working with this material became a process of unveiling – like peeling the layers of an onion – in order to access inner perception and self-knowledge.

This research was nourished by encounters with ancient masks, sculptures and bas-reliefs preserved in the museum. Their facial tensions, symbolic gestures and sculpted volumes influenced the spontaneous modeling of the clay. Rather than reproducing historical forms, I allowed these presences to
resonate freely within an experimental sculptural process.

In a world saturated with images and constructed identities, the search for inner truth becomes a contemporary myth. If ancient masks embodied gods, heroes and collective archetypes, this mask embodies the modern human need for authenticity, presence and inner depth.

Bark Mask – Nature and Metamorphosis
The second artistic direction materialized as a bark mask created from natural elements collected in the park: pieces of bark, fibers and organic fragments shaped by time and weather.

This gesture became an act of listening and transformation: the landscape itself turned into living matter and a sculptural face. The old trees, textures of the bark and rhythms of the forest directly informed the form of the mask.

This work echoes the myth of Daphne, transformed into a laurel tree to escape Apollo, and the dryads, tree spirits embodying the soul of forests. These myths resonate strongly within a domain where nature and sculpture coexist, reminding us that vegetal life carries memory, spirit and symbolic
power.

A Contemporary Myth – Reconnecting Culture and Nature
For me, the clay mask represents museum memory, cultural heritage and the trace of human civilizations.
The bark mask represents natural forces, organic cycles and living ecosystems.
Together, these two masks form a contemporary myth: the urgent need to restore balance between culture and nature, human history and ecological consciousness.

By working between museum collections and living landscape, maskmaking becomes a bridge between ancient mythologies and present-day questions, between embodied memory and future imagination.

Lucia Picaro.

Associated professor in Performing Arts and holder of a degree in Theatre Studies (UCL), Lucia Picaro is a set designer specialising in the creation of theatrical masks and masked performance.
She trained with some of the leading masters of this art form around the world: Donato Sartori, Stefano Perocco, Adriano Iurissevich and Antonio Fava (Italy); Serge Poncelet, Erhard Stiefel and Laura Sheleen (France); La Family Floez (Germany); as well as Javanese and Balinese master artists (Indonesia).