Masked Taping 1979

Curator: Senga Nengudi's photomontage, "Masked Taping," made in 1979, has always struck me. It is striking for its fragmented beauty. The use of photography and the almost performative aspect of the work resonate even today. What's your immediate take on this piece? Editor: Initially, there is an unsettling feeling, a dance of exposure and concealment. These masked figures in motion seem like ancestral echoes attempting to materialize in the present. I am drawn to that central void, a kind of black sun. It pulls the eye and begs the question of what it is we are not meant to see. Curator: Indeed. Nengudi has always been masterful at capturing the ephemeral. Each panel of "Masked Taping" feels like a fleeting glimpse, a memory half-grasped. I think there's an intense and primal symbolism in the masks, the shapeless forms… they resonate with hidden parts of ourselves. Editor: Absolutely. Masks universally signify transformation and protection. These images, shrouded in shadow and captured mid-movement, could be about shedding skins, or the construction of identity—all that we layer to create and hide ourselves. Even the installation layout evokes the format of early photography or even anatomical documentation, yet, there's also this chaotic energy refusing any clear reading. Curator: And that chaotic energy might just be the point, right? We can’t easily categorize our experiences, so Nengudi gives us something visceral, something that moves in ways logic can't define. I often see her works as embodying the human struggle itself— always reaching, never quite still. Editor: Well, Nengudi provides a visual language rich with interpretive possibilities. It's not about a single meaning but a collection of possible stories—identity, vulnerability, resilience—all wrapped within these figures. Curator: Right, it asks so much of the viewer and rewards such engagement with, perhaps, a heightened sense of their own place in all this... and, maybe, something undefinable, which I am fine with. Editor: Perhaps we have both looked into the black sun a little too long... leaving each of us to grapple with the masks we find.