Face to Face: Looking at Objects That Look at You
March 10th – December 9th 2018
The Hearst staff and 14 UC Berkeley first-year students have co-curated a global selection of objects that depict human faces in different ways.
The exhibit asks: Why and how do crafting traditions of the world so often incorporate human faces, and how do people respond to those faces? Objects such as West African helmet masks and Roman sculpture illustrate varying conceptions of the “ideal” face, while Japanese tobacco boxes and ancient Peruvian portrait jars raise the question of what a facial expression can mean.
Additional objects, including Chinese wooden figurines and Caroline Mytinger’s paintings of Papua New Guineans, represent the contrast between portraying faces of one’s own ethnic group versus those of another. Visitors are invited to examine the way they themselves depict and interpret faces in their everyday lives.
This timely exhibit cultivates critical thinking about crucial issues such as stereotyping, representation and misrepresentation, and snap judgments.