"ORACLE - BOLIVIANOS" Soft Pastel on Sandpaper

Bolivianos In reality the festive masks made of stucco or cloth which the dancers wear to cover their psychological masks of submission, indifference and self-inflicted censure, permit them to show their true faces. By virtue of this paradoxical covering to uncover, all the unconfessed desires, the repressed energies and the hidden resentments overflow in a torrent of color, movement and melody: a magnificent awakening of a sleeping culture. Masks of the Bolivian Andes, Editorial Equipus and Banco Mercantil My long-standing fascination with traditional masks took a leap forward in the spring of 2017 when I visited the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia. One particular exhibition on view, with more than fifty festival masks, was completely spell-binding. The masks were old and had been crafted in Oruro, a former tin-mining center about 140 miles south of La Paz on the cold Altiplano (elevation 12,000’). Depicting important figures from Bolivian folklore tradi