Narcissus Mask

Narcissus Mask is in display from 13 march to 26 April 2026 at the Glen Eira City Council Gallery, in Caufield, Vic, Australia, as part of the "Bound by Thread" exhibition by the Naarm Textile Collective.

Narcissus Mask is formed from threads removed from an earlier work, where their absence delineated a fragile human silhouette—light passing through what remained, the body dissolving into space. That earlier gesture addressed erosion, permeability, and the gradual loosening of the self.

In this work, those same threads return. What was once undone is gathered and bound into a face. Accumulation replaces absence: the surface thickens, becoming dense and obstructive, a material that blinds rather than reveals. Threads spill from the mouth, suggesting speech without release, language looping inward and collapsing under its own excess. From the eyes, threads descend like tears, marking not only grief but failed vision—an inability to see beyond the self.

The mask is resolutely inward-facing. Rather than reflection, it invokes the myth of Narcissus as enclosure: a condition of self-absorption where perception and address are sealed. Memory is embedded in the thread itself, carried through its removal, return, and binding. Identity is rendered neither open nor stable, but compressed and opaque. What once dissolved into light becomes materially heavy, where binding operates as both structure and blindness.