Collection: JULIEN BONET - Costumes

The artist about his series: Costumes
Inspired by European winter festivals and carnival traditions

Fear in masked rites

The oppressor, the savage, the stranger, the demon... All over the world there are masked festivals in which protagonists invoke fear. The choreography reflects their image: they hunt, growl, threaten, catch or smear passers-by with soot. This fear is rooted in legends, supernatural beliefs, local history or simply nature. Fear is thus a cornerstone of many festivals; people love to scare themselves. Halloween is a good example of this.

Today, the figures of the demon or the bear probably no longer inspire fear. But in the past, when nature was a real threat and magic was a reality, things may have been different. Back then, masked parties may have been true theaters of fear, a source of adrenaline, similar to science fiction and horror films today.

Beyond the thrills, masquerades may also have served a function similar to that of dreams. Nightmares allow the mind to separate fear from its actual source, providing relief by reliving the situation of terror but without consequences for one's own safety. Could masked celebrations have helped to defuse fundamental fears such as death, wild danger or the unfamiliar?

But now that nature seems to hold no secrets or pose no threat, and we even protect the wilderness, what would costumes look like that reflect our contemporary concerns?

Our fears today are intangible, elusive, and arise from the complexity of our modern world. Financial crises, pandemics, climate change, terrorism, the dissolution of gender roles, and much more. Real fears of risk go hand in hand with uncertainty about the complexity of these issues. The more information we have, the more we question what was once considered certain. The better we understand these issues, the less tangible they seem. In this way, the worlds of specialists bring back old fears: collapse, foreign invaders, global conspiracies.

The aim of this series is to explore our contemporary concerns by drawing on the codes of masquerades.

Julien Bonet