Untitled

About this work

You see a close-up of a face, half in shadow, wearing a red mask that looks like it’s made of crumpled paper or fabric. Acconci often worked with performance and the body, but here he turned his own face into a print. The mask hides identity, yet the embossing—where the paper is pressed to create raised lines—makes the surface feel almost alive. It’s like the mask is both covering and revealing something at once. If you want to see more prints that play with texture and identity, look up the technique etching.