Making/Unmaking, and Reusing. Cultural Creativity of Masks

Traditional craftsmanship, like other kinds of knowledge, know-how and technical skills, is one of the areas of cultural heritage whose importance and density of meaning has long been recognised. Heritage-making processes usually revolve around this domain and the creative and symbolic dimensions tend to be defined in relation to the divergent local and global dimensions. In Italy, mask making is not always recognized as a craft practice. Rather, the knowledge and techniques used in making masks tend to be counted among cultural practices and expressions, the result of individual craftsmanship and the cultural memory of the communities involved in masquerades. This paper aims to critically analyse some processes related to the artefacts produced or packaged during the winter masking rites investigated in the Basilicata region of Italy. These masks originate from technical skills learnt, embodied, and often informally transmitted, while also being enriched by artistic contributions, contaminations, and innovations. On the one hand, I will describe the masks with their “cultural biographies” and materiality, in addition to their symbolic meanings and their functions expressed in time and ritual space. On the other hand, the mask-makers will emerge, who draw heavily on local traditions, available techniques and materials, and the “knowledge of the hand” learned from scratch or handed down over generations. The “making,” “unmaking,” and “reusing” thus become a metaphor for the production of masks. Positioning themselves between continuity and change, mask makers, like “bricoleurs,” draw on tradition in a creative way, confirming, transforming, and evoking it.