A cascade of costumes

BLAME it on Rio: Mention the word “carnaval,” and one of the first images that pops into mind is that of scantily clad dancers doing the samba.

By contrast, the exhibition “¡Carnaval!” at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History focuses on the elaborate head-totoe outfits worn in eight cities and villages across Europe and the Americas. The show presents about 50 authentic costumes, 15 short videos and numerous photo murals to explore the varied traditions surrounding the festival that usually takes place in February.

Of course, when curator Barbara Mauldin began assembling the exhibition nearly a decade ago, she had no idea that one of the cities featured in it -- New Orleans -- would be ravaged by a hurricane not long before the show opened in Los Angeles. One of her key costume contributors reported losing all of his wares to Hurricane Katrina, and she suspected that the show’s stop at the New Orleans Museum of Art next year would be canceled.

“New Orleans called a week after the hurricane hit and confirmed they wanted it to open in fall 2006,” Mauldin says. “They weren’t damaged, but the neighborhood was flooded.”

So there is the sense that the show must go on. Even the city of New Orleans announced late last month that Mardi Gras would take place next year, albeit scaled down.

“The whole purpose of carnival is to get a little wild and crazy, to forget all your troubles,” Mauldin says. “It’s fun to play, of course, and it brings together whole communities on an annual basis, regardless of status or class. A lot of us don’t have that kind of event in our lives.”

Though carnival began in the Middle Ages as a way for European Catholics to mark the start of Lent -- the period of fasting and penitence from Ash Wednesday to Easter -- it became more secular over the centuries. It usually incorporates not only disguises but also some wild, rough games and a certain amount of debauchery -- a brief annual lowering of social barriers that actually serves to reinforce social structure, Mauldin says.

Though the origins and purpose of the celebration are common, the traditions vary substantially in the eight places examined: Laza, Spain; Venice, Italy; Basel, Switzerland; Recife/Olinda, Brazil; Tlaxcala, Mexico; Oruro, Bolivia; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and New Orleans. Each locale receives its own room in the show, with mannequin-filled installations displaying the costumes and eight-minute videos on LCD monitors bringing the revelry to life.

One such video from Laza, a town of about 900, includes noisy processions with bagpipes, whipping said to symbolize the wrath of 16th century tax collectors and the throwing of ant-filled dirt at people. The costumes are relatively modest ensembles of white shirts, black pants or skirts, and red sashes.

Laza contrasts with the next stop on the tour: Venice, which puts the emphasis on the aristocratic origins of its masquerade ball. Accordingly, the costumes are more elaborate and reference figures such as Arlecchino, the harlequin of 17th century commedia dell’arte, and the Doctor of the Plague, a figure reminiscent of the “Spy vs. Spy” cartoon characters with its long-beaked white mask, glasses and a black cape. (In one of three concurrent photo installations, Shirley and David Rowen also document the quiet beauty of Venice’s carnival.)

Much of carnival revolves around the concept of “playing the other.” So it is that the ancestors of Mexican Indians in Tlaxcala wear masks that represent the Caucasian faces of the Europeans who colonized their land, and they perform French square dances.

Farther south, in Oruro, aggressive Bolivian caporale dancers portray the corporals who once oversaw African and Indian laborers. In Trinidad and Tobago, favorite get-ups include those of Navy sailors and the devil.

Presenting the costumes and customs of eight regions was a difficult undertaking. Mauldin, the curator of Latin American art at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, N.M., first got the idea for the show at a retreat in 1995. By the time the show premiered in Santa Fe late last year, she had spent eight years on “¡Carnaval!,” a joint project of the Fowler and the Santa Fe museum. (The St. Louis Museum of Art was originally involved as well but withdrew after administrative changes.)

“Sometimes these things fall apart because the time frames are usually pretty long,” exhibition designer David Mayo says, “but Barbara held it together.”

During that time, she worked with academic consultants in each of the locales, as well as visiting a majority of the sites to buy costumes and shoot videos for the show.

“That’s part of the reason why the project stretched out over the years. You can only visit one place a year,” Mauldin says. “Plus, each year I was buying costumes, and we needed funds to buy them. Each costume was a challenge, in terms of having it tell a story, and in terms of buying and shipping it.”

And now, after having traveled extensively to gather material for “¡Carnaval!,” she finds herself on a long haul with the show. After closing at the Fowler in April, it is scheduled to stop in New York, New Orleans, Dallas and Pittsburgh, carrying the exhibition at least through early 2008.

Says Mauldin: “By that point I’ll be ready to retire.”

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‘¡Carnaval!’

Where: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA campus, Westwood

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 8 p.m. Thursdays

Ends: April 23

Price: Free

Info: (310) 825-4361, fowler.ucla.edu