When the world was flipped upside down last year, creatives everywhere went into overdrive trying to come up with a new outlet to keep their artistry flowing. Multidisciplinary artist Jase King turned to something very apropos: the mask. A controversial overnight constant in our lives, King saw the masks’ potential for something otherworldly and started creating elegant, disturbing face coverings from materials sourced around him. Join Submission beauty as we take a short and sweet trip inside Jase King’s mind, and learn how he turned his home into a hunting ground for ideas.
What inspired you to begin creating, and how do you come up with the combinations of fabrics that you use in your creations?
The creations of my handmade masks started on the first day of home isolation during lockdown in Paris. I used anything that I could find at home. When you are limited in options, it forces you to be resourceful and take things apart and repurpose items. At that point I was up-cycling everything from old cushion covers to broken Christmas ornaments. The process allowed me to stay creative and focus my mind. Almost in a meditative state, I would go to bed thinking of what I would do the next day and get out of bed every morning at 6:30am with a joyous purpose. I believe these statement pieces were born out of necessity to stay sane in a moment where the world was forging through the insanity of a global pandemic. My inspirations changed accordingly with each mask. Within the spectrum of the different looks, each carries an array of emotions and memories represented in textures, colours and unconventional materials. If you look hard enough, you will discover hidden secret messages within.
“Within the spectrum of the different looks, each carries an array of emotions and memories represented in textures, colors and unconventional materials.”
Do you feel like the isolation in a pandemic forced you into bringing out a deeper side to your creations?
My work before the masks had always stemmed from a raw instinctual part of me whether it was in art direction, painting, photography, sculpture or anything else I put my name to. The need to create was always the driving force behind it all. What the pandemic has proven to me as an artist is that creation doesn’t stop just because the world did. It propelled me in a forceful nature like opposing magnets, to resist reality and delve face first into the universe of my mind. Straddling on the cusp of escapism and fantasy, it was a perfect marriage for the duration of Covid-19. Now that we are let out and our lives are more sociable, my creatures, a term I call my masks, have taken on the next form of having the face less hindered and adorned with more lux embellishments. The evolution with each piece represents the ebbs and flows of my conscious and unconscious psyche.
“What the pandemic has proven to me as an artist is that creation doesn’t stop just because the world did. It propelled me in a forceful nature like opposing magnets, to resist reality and delve face first into the universe of my mind.”
What do you hope to do with your art in the future?
Like a touring museum show in different countries, the universe I’ve created in different forms, is ripe to be shared in person and discovered up close. An interactive experience where art and fashion harmonize, showcasing my works from fashion garments made from a single photo print taken in Tibet, to the Tibetan Dream mask inspired from memory of having altitude sickness while I was there as well as photographic reportage of my journey traversing on roads less travelled near the Himalayas. It is terribly exciting how a single life experience, had in turn manifested in multidisciplinary art forms. To breathe life to each creation, the videography aspect where I take on the form of the character behind the masks, propels it from being something merely ornamental to a fully realised character. Along with my paintings and sculptures on canvas, I’ve been steadily assembling all the elements together. Soon in the near future, our energies will coincide, somewhere, some place. If nothing else, this pandemic has proven that we are all in it together.
@JASEKING
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