Masked Odyssey

Masked Oddysey started as a summer project inspired by the movie "El Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro" a film starring a silver-masked wrestling superhero “Santo” who battles female’ vampires. After watching the film, I got interested in the wrestling fights in Mexico where is called Lucha libre meaning “freestyle wrestling” o literally “free fight”. What was interesting to me were the masks used in the fights, and so I researched on how fighters would inspire themselves to achieve their attire.

In the late 19th century, fighters would wear masks not only as a costume but more as an identity they would take during their performance. Such was the importance of the mask that fighters would fight mask against mask, meaning the loser is unmasked by the winner. Masks were at first very simple and it was just to distinguish the wrestler, then the masks had more meaning, more as an identity and wrestlers would be inspired in animals, ancient heroes, and gods.

I wanted a collection of pieces inspired by masks, creating my own, also based on the whole cultural concept of Lucha libre in Mexico, the wrestling heroes and their heroes. For my first-hand research, I focused on looking for animals that had special symbolism throughout the pre-Hispanic Mexican culture and how ancient cultures would worship them through sculptures and other objects, with their unique almost cartoonish style, which was very inspirational for the motifs on the collection. For this, I went to the British Museum to the room of Mexico, in which I focused special attention to objects that somehow included the shape of an animal. After, I went to the zoo to hand draw and paint animals and study their shapes and textures. After a lot of studies and research, I completed a collection of vivid and bright texturized digital patterns, and embroidered pieces.