The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) holds an in-depth African Art collection with over 2,500 objects spanning four centuries and a diverse range of cultures. Thousands upon thousands of miles away from the multitude of cultural contexts and origins these objects are grouped behind glass vitrines and on austere white plinths, installed by curatorial staff to fit a chronology of Western visual art practice. The masks in the collection present a tension point. Speaking broadly, masks are produced across cultures in Africa and are one aspect of an integral and holistic form of embodied and active pedagogy through ritual. They are worn for public and private performance and storytelling in collaboratively developed situ, and circulated through communities as a source of oral knowledge exchange. Through centuries of colonial violence and capitalist extraction these specific objects now sit in gallery collections around the world detached from the action, ritual, communities and physical bodies that they were made for. Disembodied heads without voice or body, these masks are "stilled", re-contextualized as stand-ins to represent Africa.

This collection's physical location in Seattle, on the unceded territory of diverse Indigenous communities with equally renowned mask-making practices, presents a compelling foil. Thousands of masks by Pacific Northwest Coast First Nations communities are also held in collections such as the SAM's. Through decades-long active negotiation, numerous masks and other cultural objects have been repatriated. Now, back in their place of origin a process of reconnection and reintegration begins.

Objects that have been displaced for centuries have lost their knowledge base. Community members no longer know the stories and rituals they were once used for. New relationships are thus being forged. Fernandes' As One is an acknowledgement and proposed reconciliation of these colonial tensions inherent in African art collections. Working with dancers from the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company and four objects from SAM's collection, the black-and-white video work presents a series of duets pairing a male or female dancer with an African object installed on a plinth. The dancers perform a series of bows, curtsies and ports de bras known as reverence to each mask. Reverence is the last exercise of a ballet class, a form of respect and acknowledgement to the teacher and pianist. The elegant slow and steady movements of the dancers allude to their origins as courtly etiquette. In this context reverence is offered to the masks. The dancers are creating an intimate connection, offering an apology and acknowledgement to these silent omnipresent masks. This duet among African and Western cultural forms speaks to a centuries-long hierarchical yet dialogic relationship. The stark lighting in black and white captures shadow projections of both mask and dancer on the walls behind. Fernandes composes shots that initiate a merging of white dancer and African mask. Some read as tender interactions, a ballerina resting her head on the shoulder of a mask, and others as a complete merging of the two, a male dancer's face fuses into the mask. These moments speak to a layered hybridity and transitional relationship between mask and its Western contextualization. The ballet dancers become a foil to the African masquerader. Held within the Western museum, one is left to consider how these cultural forms can thrive and evolve behind the glass of a vitrine.

- Shaun Dacey
"As One," in Still Move: Brendan Fernandes. (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2016), 138.