STARS ARE EYES

“Stars are eyes”, a book by my colleague Marc ASSAYAG,
The artistic production of the Abelam people has been known since the middle of the 20th century.
Numerous works by anthropologists, collectors and curators have made it famous worldwide.
These people are known for having developed a veritable “visual language” that dispenses with words.
However, this non-verbal language has always been perceived through classical Western and museum visual rules, leading to what might be called “a mistranslation”.
These objects were designed by artists who have a different relationship to the object, the image and its meaning.
Perception is not innate; it is a socially and culturally situated practice.
Looking at these masks head-on and unidirectionally, the (Western) observer only perceives a single (and tiny) part of the different faces of these masks, leaving a multitude of other facets in the blind spot.