Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks | Rituals

Since 1985, photographer PHYLLIS GALEMBO has traveled extensively to photograph sites of ritual dress in Africa and the Americas. In her latest body of work, Galembo turns to Mexico, where she captures cultural performances with a subterranean political edge. Using a direct, unaffected portrait style, Galembo captures her subjects informally posed but often strikingly attired in traditional or ritualistic dress.

Masking is a complex tradition in which the participants transcend the physical world and enter the spiritual realm. Masks, costumes and body paint transform the human body and encode a rich range of political, artistic, theatrical, social and religious meanings on the body. In her vibrant color photographs, Galembo highlights the artistry of the performers, how they use materials from their immediate environment to morph into a fantastical representation of themselves and an idealized vision of a mythical figure. 

Galembo captures her subjects suspended between past, present and future, with their religious, political and cultural affiliations—their personal and collective identifications—displayed on their bodies.

PHYLLIS GALEMBO is an American photographer whose remarkable career photographing ritual dress and masquerade from around the globe expresses a phenomenal range of political, artistic, theatrical, social and religious meanings. She is renowned for her six photographic monographs from Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Galembo’s interest in performative masking can be viewed as a conceptual project with contemporary appeal throughout the art world, as well as in the specialized fields of fashion and textiles, performance, and anthropology, among others.

Phyllis Galembo has had solo exhi.bitions at the International Center for Photography (ICP), New York, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., the Boca Rotan Museum of Art, Florida, the Tang Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York, among others. In 2013, a series of her photographs was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace curated by Massimilliano Gioni and Cindy Sherman.

Her photographs are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center for Photography (ICP), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Yale University Art Gallery, and Library of Congress, among others. Her work has been widely reviewed and published in print and other media.

Phyllis Galembo was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014, received a Senior Fulbright Research Award for her work in Nigeria, and has also received awards from the New York Council for the Arts (NYSCA), and the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), most recently in 2016.

Phyllis Galembo is a Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, State Univ. of New York, department of Art and Art History.