Claim: Gillian Wearing, an English conceptual artist, uses masks in his work to function as protection, such as in his piece Trauma (2000) to explore confessing with a mask and in the piece eight participants confess their trauma and the mask that is given reflects the age when they suffered their trauma, with the intention of transporting the viewer back to "the defining moment in the wearer’s lives."
Evidence: Gillian Wearing CBE, RA (born 10 December 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the 1997 Turner Prize. In Russel Ferguson's "Show Your Emotions" he draws Wearing's use of mask draws to an older tradition that runs back to at least as far as classical Greek tragedy: "One in which the mask functions not so much to substitute one identity for another as to obliterate the superficial aspects of physical appearance in order to reveal more fundamental truths". Call Gillian (1994) is a 30-minute long video where Wearing recruited strangers through posting an ad in Time out magazine and provided a space where participants would confess their terrors and fantasies to the camera, their identity protected by costume masks. The use of masks also questions authenticity and how reality can be fabricated. Trauma (2000) is a further exploration of confessing with a mask. The eight participants confess their trauma and the mask that is given reflects the age when they suffered their trauma, with the intention of transporting the viewer back to "the defining moment in the wearer's lives".