_ask, a mixed medium exhibition and fashion show at the Leather Archives & Museum, celebrates the mask and its ability to transform its wearer into dual persona of subject/object.

_ask reviews the latest in fetish inspired masks and works by local, national and international artist and producers. The show will explore the mask as an adornment through which the wearer alters or amplifies an aspect of themselves that is normally out of reach due to social attitudes of the gaze. With the adoption of the mask, the wearer has the allowance to suppress themselves and become the mask, which in itself is a fetish.

However, if the mask is in the hands of a dominate, the persona of the wearer becomes an object of submission and the mask a removal of humanity.

In the end, allowing the mask to become a signifier through which the dominant can forgo the “ask” of boundary politics.