Faces

By Lilia Bird

"Faces" is a three-piece series painted in January 2020, in anticipation of my immigration to Japan. It depicts a trio of kabuki masks, each belonging to a different individual, in hopes of inviting the viewer to create their own idea of to whom each mask belongs. 

Using the medium of very cheap watercolours on slightly higher quality paper, these works preserve my anticipatory feelings about traveling from the United Kingdom to Japan. Bearing in mind that, although I consider myself lucky to have traveled as extensively as I have around Europe, I had never set foot past Turkey, so really had no idea what Japan would be like. 

It’s different than I’d expected in many ways, but not in others. People here are incredibly kind, and yes, there are a lot of anime, manga, and gaming references around. Yet the meager Japanese I’d practiced at home turned out to be totally wrong, and somehow (I’m looking at you, Shounen anime), I’d picked up the pronouns of a teenage boy. Luckily, it didn’t take too much mental effort to rewrite those pronouns to something a little more reflective of my physical stature. 

So today, with my new wealth of experience and knowledge, I can’t help but wonder if the current version of myself sees this work with the same eyes as the version who painted "Faces" in the first place. Does our impression of art stay preserved like pigment on paper, or does it change with experience like people do?

Are there new people looking back at us through the eyes of those masks, now?