concept:era contemporary
Mask Series No. 6
Oil painting by Zeng Fanzhi (1996). From his Mask Series (1994-2001). Depicts masked figures in an interior wearing red Pioneer scarves, contrasting collective communist identity markers with the blank white masks of anonymity and alienation.
Scholarly Significance
Post-Tiananmen Chinese contemporary art anchor.
Notes
- ·White masks represent social anonymity as a survival mechanism in post-Tiananmen urban China.
- ·Red Pioneer scarves (Young Pioneers of China) create a sharp semiotic contrast with the masked faces.
- ·The Mask Series is the most commercially successful body of work by a post-Tiananmen Chinese artist.