Thursday Salute to Originals: Threaded Masks
Irish textile artist crochets cultural commentary and mask-making.
From monstrous-looking faces to playful distortions, Irish-based artist threadstories explores expression and emotion through masks made of fringe, knots, yarn, and thread. In her latest work, the Irish artist poses in square self-portraits against a grey backdrop — designed to echo the appearance of Instagram shots.
Each fiber-based mask serves as a metaphor for how people alter the appearance of their real lives to “perform” for their followers online. Each mask covers expression and the images crop out a background, leaving only the impressive and elusive expressions of the subject in view.
“The masks deny the viewer the full story of who the sitter is, echoing the curated or false personas we view online daily. My masks are photographed against a sanitized white square. I know there is often chaos, mess, and noise just beyond the margins of that photograph, but the messiness of life doesn’t make the edit for social media,” said threadstories on This is Colossal.
This Thursday, we’re saluting threadstories’ textile masks and the important symbolism they represent. You can follow more similar creations on the artist’s Instagram.
Sources: Threadstories, This is Colossal