Our concept revolves around faces and their artistic reproduction, i.e. portraits. The reproduction of the face is what allowed its exteriorization, being the face reproduced by an external medium, but which led to its defacialization too, being the face objectified by that external medium. In art history, the face has been represented in various ways, from painted portraits to photographs. Photography led to the invention of “the technical face”, a standardized face mediated by technical and external means to the human self.

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The first type of portraiture ever created, invented in Ancient Egypt, was naturalistic portraiture. Declined in the the Middle Ages, it reacquired importance in the early Renaissance period. From the 16th to the 19th century, portraiture was mainly reserved to the elites. This was linked to the idea of the face as something personal and unique. With the advent of photography in the 19th century, everybody could afford portraits, and the face obsession started. Faces began transforming from subject faces, unique and personal, into object faces, standardized and non-unique.  The human face has however never been represented as much as in the 21st century, due to social media. Nowadays more than ever, the uniqueness of the face has been lost.   

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Photography, in the 19th century, and social media, in the 21st century, contribute(d) to a shift from the face subject, unique and personal, to the face object, standardized and common. However, the current use of face masks during the Covid pandemic is bringing the face subject back to life. In fact, considering the Greek origins of the word prosopon, which means at the same time face, mask, and façade, the Greeks believed that the mask was a revealing object rather than a hiding one, as it is commonly thought. Especially during the pandemic, that started in 2020, many people complain that their face is hidden by the mask and that they cannot entirely be seen by others, being half of their face covered. The truth is that they are not able to show their entire facial appearance, but, in this way, their face becomes more personal and unique underneath the mask, since what is not seen arises interest and fascination in others.        

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Faceless faces project is willing to communicate the idea of a circular evolution of the face reproduction, i.e. its development from subject to object and then back to subject. Our project is tackling the following issues: how, during the Covid pandemic, the use of face masks should make people reflect on its positive effect on the 2020/2021 face. Raising awareness towards how the face mask is bringing faces back to being subjects rather than objects. The audiences will: face painted portraits while invited to reflect on how the paintings exteriorize the face but still express its personality and uniqueness; observe photographic- and video portraits, while invited to reflect on how these media have standardized the face; stand in front of portrayed persons wearing face masks, while invited to understand how masks are not hiding their faces but revealing them.