On 3 July, at 6 pm, Jonas Staselis’s photography exhibition “The Ball of Masks” opens at Lithuanian Artists’ Association Kaunas Department in the gallery “Drobė”. This exhibition demonstrates through reportage photography that not only the world of beauty contests can be exposed as an illusory, artificial, fake, constantly changing kaleidoscope of masks – social roles. In photographs, social reality emerges as a never-ending masquerade ball, a carnival of masks.
Innocent and predatory, seeking fame and marriage, looking for success and men. Wearing the crumbling, falling masks of beauty queens. Characters weeping at the glamour of their ladies and trying to pass themselves off as patrons of real beauty and impartial judges. Wolves hiding behind grotesque masks of fake lambs. Photographers in paparazzi masks, briefly gaining mystical powers thanks to photographic technology – to highlight, enlarge, beautify, enhance, or maybe even help them win a beauty contest. Ordinary spectators, dripping with spit and indulging their erotic fantasies, claiming the role of witnesses and near-participants in beauty contests.
Independence has already been won, but democracy has yet to be built, and it will not come immediately, with a wave of a wand or a constitution. And that democracy is still so scarce. And we want a miracle. To pretend, if only for half a day, if only for a short time, to acquire special powers and qualities, to create an illusory, artificial world of spectacle, of carnival, to overcome the greyness, the boredom, the apathy and the disillusionment of everyday life. To inhabit the Venetian Carnival in Milan’s fashion and mafia scenery. Forget the clowns of the circus, the prophecies of wizards and magicians. To suddenly stand out from the crowd, to demonstrate the superiority of your money, your bodies, your power in a world of slow daily life.
The photographer as the magician of this illusory spectacle and, to some extent, as an impostor, as a mediator, a medium between beauty and the everyday world. At that time, there were no social networks, no Instagram, so newspaper reports, and television broadcasts were all that reached the public. While the work of TV cameramen was a little less visible (when the camera starts and when it finishes), the photographer’s flashes betrayed the moment of capture: the photographer was always here and now, especially during rehearsals or preparation. Sometimes he was wearing the mask of an advisor and assistant, sometimes he was almost a prince-to-be on horseback, sometimes he was playing the role of a bully, because, in order to be visual, the beauty queen contestants had to pass on the less than pleasant remarks made by the choreographer or the director. The photographer’s role as a mediator, as a medium, allowed him to participate in both sides of the process and, year after year, to understand more and more the intricacies of this mutual “game”.
The subject of this exhibition is the photographer wearing the mask of the medium – the intermediary between the real and the illusory world of beauty, today travelling through the activated reminiscences of several decades of the visual archive. Ironically, but also with sadness, with a longing for unfulfillment, he observes the changing forms of social reality – he watches and wonders, he watches and wonders us all by displaying and preparing – masks and roles – in the seemingly distant, but never-ending spectacle of the mask ball.
Liutauras Degėsys
During the presentation of Jonas Staselis’s exhibition “Mask Ball”, you will have the opportunity to see works presenting the context of the time, which are not on display in the exhibition, and hear stories about the influence of the illusory world of beauty in the 1990s on a society that was beginning to establish democracy (duration about one hour).
Jonas Staselis is a photographer, exhibition curator, cultural producer, editor, active in the field of Lithuanian photography since the early 2000s. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions and photographic plein airs (most recently “Uždaros teritorijos” 2018-2020, “Atviros teritorijos” 2020, “Sartų fotovasara” 2021, “Fotografijos savaitgalis” 2021), and has presented the travelling exhibition “Kaukių Balius” in various Lithuanian cities from 2023 to 2024. He has been awarded several times in the competition “Lithuanian Press Photography”, and in 2004 and 2019 he received the “Golden Frame” award. In 2020, he was awarded the Lithuanian Journalists’ Union Prize “For Merit in Journalism”.
The exhibition runs until 31 July.
The exhibition is organised by the Lithuanian Press Photographers’ Club and MB Uždaros teritorijos
The exhibition is financed by Vilnius City Municipality, LATGA
The exhibition is supported by KristiAna, Taurakalnis, Foto123, FotoProCentras
