Masks in Chiapas

If you look back to my November 2005 posting from San Cristobal de las Casas, you will see the beginning stages of the mask workshop that I taught for FOMMA, Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya, Strength of the Mayan Woman. They are an indigenous women's theatre company & I taught two members of the company to make both papier mache & latex masks. The above mask was the sample that I made to demonstrate the process. The other masks in this posting were made by the women in the workshop.

These are the latex masks made by Marie & Victoria. They are half masks. After taking this photo of Marie in a mask, we added a mop to see what it would look like as hair.




Latex is good for depicting old people I find. The next three masks fulfilled the original request for an old couple, two youngsters & a jaguar. These next three are papier mache masks.