Entre paredes y máscaras: Bernadette Despujols

This work explores the notion of the mask through the archetype of the “persona” in the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. The persona is the social mask: the public image and the role we adopt to adapt, interact, and protect ourselves within a community. It functions as an interface between the intimate self and external expectations, making coexistence possible, but also generating tensions when the distance between the two widens. 

The experience of the emigrant intensifies this split. When moving to a new cultural context, one is compelled to assume different “masks” in order to integrate, respond to implicit norms, and fulfill specific social roles. In that process, aspects of one’s deeper identity are often hidden, transformed, or negotiated in order to belong. 

As an emigrant, I have gone through multiple transformations and adaptations: not only in language, but also in gestures, attitudes, and ways of relating to others. Each change implies an adjustment, a reinterpretation of who I am in relation to others and to myself.

“Between Walls and Masks” alludes to the expression “to be caught between a rock and a hard place”: a state of tension in which there are no easy exits. The emigrant often finds themselves facing the dilemma of transforming in order to continue, or resisting change and remaining on the margins. In that intermediate space, between the mask that protects and the wall that limits, an identity is constructed in constant negotiation. 

However, I would like to think that the paintings also hold a tense joy: a contained vibration that expresses the constant search for pleasure in the Latin American experience. There is in them a subtle mischief, the persistence of a hidden, intimate, and tropical language that shelters beneath the mask. Even in adaptation and uprootedness, a distinct pulse remains—a vital energy that does not dissolve, but rather transforms and resists from within.