GAURI GILL: SOMETIMES THE STRANGE IS PART OF THE EVERYDAY
THE DAILY PIC: In her solo show at MoMA PS1, Gauri Gill presents photos of the Kokna people of Maharashtra, India, wearing masks made out of the papier maché that the group is known for. Her subjects put on cobra masks, or masks shaped like the heads of birds or of deer, or even of that most deadly of creatures, Homo sapiens.
You’d think that Gill’s animal imagery would evoke the metamorphoses of ancient Greece and Rome, or the modern weirdness of Picasso’s “Demoiselles” or Magritte’s apple-head. But what’s surprising and appealing about Gill’s photos is that they manage to avoid making their subjects seem otherworldly or exotic. Her four-square photographic technique, and the everyday settings she prefers for her subjects, have the effect of denying the exotic even in the strange. Gill makes it clear that her sitters are normal people who have put on masks of their own making and choosing, not the Other become animal.
The Kokna may count as one of India’s tribes, but that does not make them “tribal” in any Western sense. (© 2018, Museum of Modern Art collection)
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