Breath_threadstories_NMS – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

A performance of ‚Breath‘ by Irish visual artist threadstories. © threadstories

The artist wears a balaclava-style mask with long wool tendrils that move with her breath. The mask was made at the start of the Irish lockdown. The mask has been acquired by National Museum Scotland as part of its collecting around the pandemic.

‘’I am incredibility grateful that this mask and accompanying film will enter the National Collection at National Museums Scotland as part of their Covid collection. The physical mask throughout history has had many varied roles in society, such as religious and social ceremony, theatre and entertainment, to provide warmth, for protest, adornment and fashion, as a tool for criminality and – globally in 2020 – for protection. My masks are made to tell stories. In Breath I used the mask as a performative object, I made the invisible, visible. Our breath, our life-force and in 2020 the transporter of our most feared opponent, Covid-19.

My masks are in a constant state of flux, the same object is reworked again and again in the studio. In a year when a vast majority of our lives felt like they were put on hold, there is something poignant about this mask entering the National Collection, it too, has now been suspended in time’’ – threadstories