Pandemic and the Hero with a Thousand Masks

People are still dreaming of the days when thousands set together to watch a soccer game. When bars were busting with social closeness. When classical music was played on a stage surrounded with people who coughed when the music stopped.

And that was only a few months ago.

Today we listen through TV and radio to those who are fighting a pandemic. They are our new heroes, even when they are victims of the virus. We talk about the good defeating the evil.

… More than any other global catastrophe in the past 50 years, we are reliving the mythology of Star Wars, the epic exploration of Anakin Skywalker and his son Luke based on a hero’s journey Joseph Campbell developed in his The Hero with a Thousand Masks.

So, as I was thinking about Campbell’s works, I decided to start a new sculpture with a message of fighting isolation, flying free again and getting back to the freedom of populating spaces empties by social distancing.

My sculptures use bones, feathers, turquoise stones, wood and painting. Here are the pieces I wanted to use:

The deer jaws could be arranged to represent wings. So I painted a symbolic bird on each jaw, along with perhaps sheep. Or just mammals walking in file.

Next was the use of feathers. The open gap between the jaws that are now opened as wings needed to be either used or covered. When I partially covered that gap, the roundness of the painted birds’ wings and the contour of the gap became too repetitive.

So, the gap was filled with two fluffy wing feathers, and the squirrel hand placed pointing down. Now the symmetry was more pleasant.

Here is the final shape of the… well, not sure what it had become! Suddenly there is a humanoid face, and the deer leg gives it a ceremonial identity.  Can it be that unconsciously I was thinking about Joseph Campbell’s hero with a thousand masks? Or was I thinking about the heroes who were caring for Covid-19 patients with insufficient protection such as masks?

The ceremonial identity of my hero is immediately noticeable without the stand -- the deer leg definitely makes it a portable hero with a mask!

It was now time to build a stand using the petrified wood I collect during my outing in the desert. And my hero is now proudly displaying movement, perhaps flight and the pursuit of freedom.

May 20, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020