Four Masks

This work comprises four monumental photographic portraits that are modified in different ways. The photographs are confronted with 3D objects, in this case with a brick pond. The interrelationship between image and object is left open to the viewer’s free interpretation and fantasy arising from her own experience.

Four Masks consists of four black-and-white photos measuring 100cm x 70cm and an installation depicting a shallow, empty pool with four steps build of non-matching building blocks. This work, in which Dopitová examines the theme of the search for identity in an open, post-revolutionary social space, is one of the most important works of Czech post-conceptual art of the early 1990s. The self-portraits show the artist in different masks symbolising some of the roles taken by women, and are a metaphor for the fact that it is sometimes difficult to decide who to be while at the same time satisfying the demands of prescribed social roles. The pool, its layers making reference to an open society with the same starting line for all, is empty however. Four Masks is an authentic testimony regarding the early 1990s, which brought unprecedented possibilities as well as uncertainty regarding the future.