MASKIERUNG

Lisl Ponger

DANSE MACABRE, 2021

C-print, 127 x 144 cm

HIDDEN TRANSCRIPT, 2021 C-print, 127 x 144cm

LA VIDA ES UN CARNAVAL, 2021 Video, 8 min.

500 YEARS, 2022

Druck auf Leinwand Print on canvas 150 x 152cm

For the "House of CHALLENGING ORDERS", Lisl Ponger and Tom Waibel have designed a room-filling installation that oscillates between carnival masks and the masks of resistance of the Zapatistas. In 1521, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés invaded the Mexican Aztec empire – 500 years later, the Zapatistas paid a "return visit" to Europe and also stopped in Vienna. Their faces were covered with bandanas, balaclavas and nowadays also Covid masks to protect them from persecution: Certainly, their masks make the Zapatista insurgents faceless and nameless at first, but they also point to those processes by which indigenous populations have been deprived of their faces and names for centuries. Moreover, during carnival, common systems of order are questioned, political and religious power relations are turned upside down, and social hierarchies are reversed. Finally, Maske und Maskierungen celebrates overthrow and change as well as processes of replacement, rather than what is replaced.