Reading 02 · Mask art

Mask art: the face as a device.

The face disappears so another self can perform — a sun, an animal, a signal, a worker with a crown.

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The reading

Across four years of work, Kims Ki keeps returning to the same gesture: covering the face. The early masks of 2016 are skins of printed paper that swallow the whole body. By 2020 they have become faceted papercraft heads — purple, green, electric blue — worn against hard white space and a black silhouette.

What stays constant is the performance. A mask here is not a disguise but an instrument: it points, warns, watches, transmits. The body in black becomes a stand, and the mask becomes the actor.

Read in order, the nine loops trace that shift from skin to sign.

The nine works

9 animated loops

Figure covered from head to torso in a lattice of printed paper, wearing a red hat — **Second skin**2016Architecture, costume and exposed interior coexist.

Figure in a spiked paper sun mask and a suit of printed paper, with red gloves — **Solar armour**2016The body becomes a vessel for a sharp celestial emblem.

Figure in black raising a purple faceted paper mask to the face — **Purple witness**2021The mask reads as toy, authority and interruption at once.

Figure in a green faceted paper animal mask with hands raised — **Green warning**2020Comic immediacy gives the mask unusual psychological force.

Figure in a blue geometric paper mask waving against a yellow burst — **Signal head**2020A blue constructed face turns gesture into transmission.

Black silhouette in a white face mask and a yellow paper crown-hat, carrying a white object — **Crowned worker**2020Regal costume collides with an ordinary repeated action.

Figure in a white mask and flat-brimmed hat beside a curling yellow line — **Wind reader**2020The hat and posture make air visible.

Masked figure in a flat-brimmed hat crouching among paper bamboo stalks — **Field observer**2020Costume, landscape and vigilance settle into one clear icon.

Seated figure in black whose head is covered by a folded cardboard helmet, hands pressing against it — **Pressure figure**2018A compressed body turns thought into weight.

Mask art: the face as a device.

The reading

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