Photo credit: Robin Levet, Yan Arexis and Alexandre Drabzak.
Event: L’Homme sauvage.
Created for the 2018 L’Homme Sauvage Festival, the King’s Mask is a monumental wooden sculpture. As a guardian figure, it embodies the symbolic power of archetypes: a blend of sovereignty, mystery, and ancestral heritage. Installed at the entrance to the site, it was the first sight visitors encountered upon arrival, acting as the guardian of the site and the festival. It establishes a dialogue between the public, the pagan event, and nature.
Designed as part of the L’Homme Sauvage Festival, the King’s Mask is part of an approach where monumental art reclaims its original role: a ritual object, a catalyst for imagination and communion. This festival, which celebrates the links between humanity and nature, offered the ideal setting for this highly symbolic work.
The mask is both a symbol of power and a symbol of transition. Behind its exaggerated features, it questions humanity’s place in the world, its connections to its roots and archetypes. It invites us to see the king not as a ruler, but as a guardian: one who watches over his people, both protective and fragile. Its open mouth, seeming to scream or sing, suggests the call of the tribe, the gathering of the human community in brotherhood—or perhaps a primal hymn to life.
Made primarily of wood (untreated logs and reclaimed planks), the mask draws on its monumental scale (over 4 meters) and frontal orientation. Its theatrical quality is enhanced by the contrasts in materials and by lighting effects, which give it a striking presence both day and night.
A contemporary totem, the King’s Mask revives ancestral imaginations linked to masks and collective rituals. Within the context of the festival, it becomes a gathering place, a guardian figure connecting myth and the present, nature and culture, the individual and the collective.
2018
Auzas, Haute-Garonne – L'Homme Sauvage Music Event
Raw wood, reclaimed wood and metal
Association La Breiche, Robin Levet
"We had the pleasure of starting to work with Alexandre in 2017, allowing him to perceive the spirit of the event, which is rooted in archaic inspiration. We placed our trust in him by giving him free rein, a trust he honored by respecting what we create and by inventing monumental, highly visual works that always captivate audiences from afar, from other countries."
Yan Arexis
Founder and organizer of the L'Homme Sauvage music event.
