A Japanese koan (riddle) says: Show me the face you had before your parents were born.

What really is the face that we show? Is it Our Face? Where does Our Face come from? Why do we have this face and not a different one? Maybe our face is a Mask under which we hide thousands of thoughts and feelings: millions of our previous incarnations and manifestations. Is Our Face our face? Does Our Face even exist?

An African belief says that a person hidden behind the mask is like a foetus inside a mother's womb. The mask is its Mother.

When we cover our face with a Mask, do we really cover it? Perhaps we only subjugate our weakness and elevate the powers of nature that are far stronger than we are, or maybe the mask allows us to re-establish a bond with the spirituality of the surrounding world?

We have this European custom called make-up. It is a type of a mask we keep changing and reapplying to become what we want others to see rather than what we really are. Make-up is an escape from oneself and an enhancement of our social attractiveness. There are faces that always hide something and those that are honest, open and expressive.

During last year's Brave festival, a Nuna mask dancer sat on the grass beside me. He sank heavily, like an animal exhausted after a long chase. He brushed against me and I had this vague feeling that it was not a human being sitting there, wearing a mask, but some kind of Creature, hidden behind it. When an Indian Teyyam dancer has his face painted with colours that represent a deity, he gazes into a mirror and he falls into a trance. The deity possesses the dancer through the painted mask. Various African tribes identify masks with spirits, ancestors, deities, energies, demons and powers that can be invited to our life but can never be possessed. The mask of a deity is stronger than a human.