Truth and fiction, past and present blur in the French artists fascinating new show, which includes a monkey masked as a Japanese child, lilies stolen from Monets garden and a stone sculpture thats warm to the touch
A public-address system warns of an approaching tornado as the car drives between wrecked buildings somewhere near Fukushima in Japan. The landscape is unpeopled. Theres just us in the car with the camera at the start of Pierre Huyghes film Human Mask, driving among broken wooden buildings unmoored from their foundations.
Now we are inside, where a girl in a blue dress sits in the gloom, her face an expressionless mask surrounded by lustrous black hair. The face is an artificial, impassive blank, giving nothing away. Is she a marionette or a masked child actor? Her arms and hands are furry and not quite human. Nor are her movements as she pads from light to dark, all alone in a filthy restaurant kitchen and in rooms hung with drapes decorated with a bamboo motif. A cockroach darts across the floor. Did I see maggots?
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