ReCreate Masks for P.Art.S. and FIMI

ReCreate was invited by P.Art.S. to create a series of masks for the 14th edition of FIMI — the International Iberian Mask Festival.

The challenge opened a more artistic space within the studio’s practice: an opportunity to move away from everyday objects and enter a field of symbol, identity, ritual and transformation.

Masks have always belonged to human imagination. They can hide, reveal, protect, exaggerate or invent an identity. They can be playful, ceremonial, cultural or spiritual. But above all, a mask only gains meaning when it meets the body, the face and the person who wears it.

For ReCreate, this was the starting point.

A Material We Know, Reimagined

The masks were created using reclaimed advertising banners — the material most present in ReCreate’s work.

But instead of becoming bags, wallets or functional pieces, the banner was deconstructed into strips and rebuilt through a loom-based technique. This allowed the material to gain texture, structure and a new expressive dimension.

The process connected directly to techniques already used in the studio, while opening a different visual language.

Eyelets became eyes.
Rivets became details.
Strips of banner became surface, volume and expression.

The same material used in daily production was pushed into another territory: more symbolic, more sculptural, more open to interpretation.

Between Craft, Identity and Disguise

This project allowed ReCreate to explore the mask as an object of transformation.

A mask is never neutral. It changes the way a person is seen and the way a person moves through the world. It creates distance, but also possibility. It allows identity to be protected, questioned, assumed or reinvented.

Through this invitation, ReCreate approached the mask as both material object and symbolic form.

The reclaimed banner carried its own previous life — colours, marks, fragments and resistance — while the weaving process gave it a new rhythm. The result was a set of pieces where material memory and human imagination meet.

A Collective Artistic Project

The project was part of the 2nd edition of P.Art.S., held within the 14th edition of FIMI, bringing together contemporary artists from different countries to reinterpret the role of the mask today.

The exhibition and catalogue created a multidisciplinary context where each artist contributed their own influences, materials and ways of seeing.

This edition also connected the artistic project to a wider environmental purpose. Part of the initiative supported reforestation efforts in areas of Portugal affected by wildfires, including Pedrógão Grande and Serra de Monchique, through Reflorestar Portugal.

For ReCreate, the invitation became a way to expand the studio’s language.

It showed how a material used in functional design can also enter artistic practice. How an everyday production technique can become an expressive gesture. And how design can transform reclaimed matter into identity, presence and meaning.