“Gestures of Mask-ulinity” is a series of works that attempts to observe society through the lens of behaviour. Mask-ulinity is a play on words, mingling masculinity and mask, signifying the dormant and docile disguise that exists behind the portrayal. As we all know, masculinity is mostly associated with toughness, violence, aggression and showing little to no emotions. However, what I attempt to discover through the process of painting is beyond the norm. They say “a belly is bigger than a country” to explain how sophisticated a human can be. So, I went deep in the ocean and knocked on the gate of unconsciousness; with a quest to find a hidden meaning for existence, a search for a reason to belong, a desire to paint the portrait of a soul, to find meaning that transcends beyond. My intention is to peel off the mask and diversify the depiction, by adding a little fairness to it without changing its tone, to find the common manifestation in both realms. So, I tried to touch every element of what makes a person, analyzing what is given and what is chosen, or what is forced and what is desired into in the process of creating, putting the body on a canvas to examine, to find a passage to transcend the soul, and to embrace human experience. The revealing process turned out to be a liberating passage, almost like the underground railroad, where the character is not a slave to perception.