Blood Mask

Excerpt

Blood Mask I, it was. There were to be others.

It was an entire head, a man's head. It was frozen, kept under refrigeration, in a locked display case on an altar-like platform. My aunt brandished the magic key: "You can touch it, Marta! Like this."

You could not see this, but the head, the bust, had been sculpted our of clay, and covered in a masking of blood. The entire head covered in a quarter-inch mask of congealed and frozen blood. It was a man's head but it looked like something mineral, primeval, raw tissue that has become fossilized, skin peeled away so that you can see what is beneath the skin. Clearly this was not a living thing, yet you could not help expecting the shuttered eyes to open, the fleshy mouth to stir. I had never seen anything so ugly, I stood staring. The adults were laughing at me.

Bio-art it was called. Bio-anatomical-art it was explained. An experimental and highly controversial European art movement begun in the 1990s. The sculptor had made a model of his own head in clay and "masked" it with his blood, which was then frozen. He'd used several liters, he said, in an embalming process called plastination.

My aunt urged me to touch the mask, its texture was "uncanny."

"It's frozen solid, don't be afraid. You can't damage it."

It will damage me! If I Touch.

Reviews

• Booklist, April 15, 2006, p. 6
• Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006
• Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2006, pp. 55
• Village Voice, May 24, 2006, p. 38
• The Providence Journal (Rhode Island), July 9, 2006, p. I-6
• The Roanoke Times (Virginia), July 23, 2006, Books, p. 6

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