THE HIDDEN MASK was create in Lubumbashi (DR Congo) where Kristof Degrauwe - a Belgian photographer - worked during one year (1999 - 2000) to complete this series in the Ethnographic Museum. He chose to work with the masks hidden in the storage rooms of the museum.
KRISTOF DEGRAUWE has given his own photographic interpretation of these masks. But once the work was done, it seemed his portraits corresponded very well with the original meaning of the masks. In a way he brought them alive again in front of his camera (with the help of young congoles models). THE HIDDEN MASK is a dive into the subconscious mind of the mask.

When this series was exposed for the first time in june 2000, the museum woke up from a long period of non-activity. Later on the exhibition was shown in Abuja (Nigeria) and in Bujumbura (Burundi). In 2013 the exhibition will be organized in Brasilia (Brasil) during the photo Biënale.