MASKS DON’T HIDE YOU –
April 12, 2026 – Ventiko, an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been shown at Garage Museum in Moscow and the Museum of the City of New York, made headlines in 2018 for trying to fly with her emotional support peacock named Dexter, two years before she began her own recovery. For this project, she partnered with artist Lukas Felix Schooler and certified art therapist Benjamin Aquila to lead participants through weekly workshops in March at the Damien Center in Indianapolis.
The workshops for the “Masks of Resilience” project took place at Cafe Oztara, a coffee shop within the Damien Center, and ended with the April 4 opening of an exhibition of the masks created through the project. During the opening, the artist also gave a live performance of her ongoing performance work, titled Sylva Dean and Me.
Ventiko began her ongoing Sylva Dean and Me work in 2010, a durational performance art project to respond to her mother’s breast cancer. The project features silent, masked performers dressed in wearable sculptures made from thousands of repurposed milk containers.
Participant Pat Hunter said she was invited to a workshop by her daughter, Claire, a friend of Schooler. Though she was much older than most in the class, she said participants were all friendly and encouraging and she returned for a second week to finish her mask.
