A Visit to a Costa Rican Art Museum Triggers a Fascination with Mascaradas

On February 17^th Art House Atenas owners Anna Matteucci and Felipe Keta lead a small group of Expats to San Jose to visit two museums: The Jade Museum and the Museo de Arte Costarricense (MAC).  It was a delightful, interesting day.  My favorite exhibit was called Valle Oscuro (dark valley) by painter Adrian Arguedas Ruano at the MAC .

As one enters the museum, Arguedas’s bold colorful paintings greet you.  A few of his sculptures catch your immediate attention too.  The works fill a large gallery room and three smaller adjoining rooms, mostly picturing masked community members along with unmasked figures.  While some young children are painted wearing small masks of animals, others are wearing distorted, grotesque, large masks, and still others are depicted wearing large heads mounted on torsos making them look larger than life.

All the paintings of Valle Oscuro were done between 2020 and 2022.  On the artist’s website I learned about his fascination with masks:

Arguedas is a native of Barva de Heredia, a small town known for keeping the traditions of making popular mask parades. In his childhood, he found artistic inspiration through the figure of his great-uncle, named Carlos Salas, who worked sculpting the clay to prepare the base that would later serve as a mold to create the original traditional masks, made with paper.  Salas had a powerful influence on the artist inspiration and artwork. https://www.adrianarguedas.com/bio.html

Doing more research, I learned that the mask tradition dates to pre-Hispanic time, when the aboriginal people made and used masks for various purposes. They were first used at funerals in two different ways: first, they were used by whoever led the mortuary procession so they appeared to have a higher power to lead the deceased to the other world, and second, they were given to the deceased to identify his role in the tribe.   Shamans and chiefs also made special use of the masks as part of their rituals.  These special masks are known as Mascaradas.

Today, in Costa Rica they are still part of community celebrations, and much to my delight I had an event in our town of Atenas where mascaradas were a highlight.

A friend on Facebook posted about a fundraising event on the full moon for a local church that included  food, music, dance and mascaradas. The evening was called “Lunada Bailable,” and I loved the poster.

I went with some cousins who were visiting from Pittsburgh, and we had a wonderful evening.  Music piped through a large sound system contributed to the festive quality of the event.  I was surprised to hear a Spanish version of “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. When it got dark and the moon was shining bright, six local dancers began the formal entertainment. While not professional, they put all their energy into their routines.  They waved their skirts and used scarfs as props.  It was fun to watch one youngster, about age 4, who pretended she had on a long skirt and delighted in following their movement.

The closing event was the Mascaradas, with children from ages toddler to maybe 5 or 6 years old, wearing masks and dancing, joined by older boys and teenagers with full body masks!  The older kids liked to come over to the tables of the audience that surrounded the performing space, and pretend to scare us.

It was a special evening for my cousins and me to be a part of this community event.  I think we were the only ExPats attending.

Three photos showing the Mascaradas in action.

All photos in this blog are by JoAnne!