Snake Mask

Year: 2021

Material: FFP2 mask, faux leather with snakeskin embossing, padding, gold-colored leather (tongue), wool fabric (inner lining), glass stones, snap fasteners

This mask was created during a time of profound social polarization, which affected personal and familial relationships alike. The vaccination debate challenged private and professional interactions – caught between individual decisions and public expectations.

This work is a response to the charged and often irreconcilable atmosphere of that time.
The FFP2 mask evolved into a textile form that fits closely to the head. A stylized snake coils around it and merges with it, forming a sealed and ambiguous entity – bodily, confronting, and difficult to decode.

The snake carries complex symbolism – in different cultures it stands for healing and danger, wisdom and deception, transformation and death. In this work, it becomes a bearer of unresolved ambivalence. As a form, it intensifies the tensions from which the mask emerged.

The mask is the result of a long process of searching – artistic, technical, and conceptual. Its form did not arise linearly, but through resistance: against the material, against the shape, against inner contradictions. It condenses the struggle for expression in a time of uncertainty.