Mama dat is Mas’ was a collaborative experimental art project supported by Butetown History & Arts Centre and funded by the Arts Council of Wales. This project was based on a concept of masking and re-presentation found in the Trinidad Carnival and discussed by writers such as Gerald Aching and Clinton Hutton. Using the formula of what I have termed 're-possession mas'/ re-presentation mas', artists Phil Babot, Amaru Chatawa, June Campbell-Davies and Adeola Dewis underwent a 6-month period of collaboration in which we aimed to tackle and explore ways of re-interpreting and re-presenting aspects of this mas' within Wales. As the name suggests, the re-possession mas' was connected to ways of empowering self through masking and performance, by allowing the opportunity to define self for one's self by one's self. The main outcome of Mama dat is Mas' was to allow access to a form of art presentation or way of working that can in a small, temporary way allow for re-affirmation of selfhood within the general social context, to anyone living in the UK who may feel some sense of displacement or who may be experiencing forms of social anxiety. Mama dat is Mas' intended to create a platform for artwork-interaction events and aimed to show that a form of experience conventionally available only to carnival performers and revellers can take on new form and meaning in art and diasporic contexts. The values: (1) that events as aesthetic forms are generated which promote new ways of repossessing the self, and (2) that the scope of art available to peoples within the Diaspora is enlarged. Mama dat is Mas’ was not intended to be another carnival. It was essentially concerned with mas’ as a performative experience that is interested in the notion of empowering self. It was a public presentation about personal visibility.
See project blog here