MASQUERADE OF LIFE

The modern world, characterized by rapid changes and busy schedules, dictates a special, fast pace that everyone has accepted in their own way. Everyone is playing their own game of life and wearing their own masks. Sometimes these masks bring us doom and sometimes acceptance. “Is it better to be accepted with your mask or is it better not to have one?” This is the question that Nea Likar focused on while creating illustrations for her latest exhibition titled Masquerade of Life, which reflects on individuals’ multi-layered nature, their everyday roles, and the game they create through their various roles, either knowingly or unknowingly. We are living in a time of rapid communication, but nonetheless we tend to be insufficiently in touch with one another – or ourselves, for that matter. We have put on masks, which are turning us into isolated individuums. Masked relationships, egotism, prejudice, and non-acceptance are the fragments of the game or the masquerade of life we are all part of. The artist elaborates all these aspects into further reflections on the individual’s relationship with nature and various animal and plant species. She draws attention to pollution and the destruction of animals – and consequently humans. Likar’s series of small illustrations merges this social theme with ecological issues, establishes universal communication among all living beings, and goes even deeper, all the way to the human cells as the basic functional units, which she depicts in her large main illustration. These seemingly simple scenes from everyday life feature masked protagonists, whose masks are mostly of animal origin. These are the animals that are on the brink of extinction, which Likar artfully connects with our demeaning attitude towards nature, ironizing the crux of the exhibition. Are we, too, an endangered species ourselves?

Tanja Kerić