📜”Mask and Double-Face” Exhibition from Nereju, Vrancea County

     Let's step into the legendary land of Nereju village, where the community keeps the memory of an archaic world alive. Accompanied by the big drum, which is covered with un-tanned calfskin, whistling and shouting, the villagers dance Chipărușul around a crackling fire in the courtyard of the dead person. Double-Face is leading them in a ritual which is testing their endurance. 

     The masks have animalistic traits, such as hideousness and malice, as well as playfulness. They frighten and at the same time give people courage. Ugliness and evil are banished through ugliness and evil, fear is cured through fear, and the community is ritually healed through dance, music, fire, but above all by joining forces, by bringing people together. 
     Masks are also the ones to drive away evil at the turn of the year, in New Year rituals, purifying the world and preparing its renewal.