They’re everywhere – sidewalks, bushes, hanging from fences, floating in pools of water with other debris and littering lawns and beaches – as ubiquitous as plastic water bottles and creating many of the same environmental risks. But these masks are so much more than just abandoned paper and fabric. They are the “flotsam and jetsam” of our pandemic wreckage - freighted with emotional significance and forever connecting us to, and reminding us of, an extraordinarily painful experience.
My goal in creating art from random photos of discarded masks is to explore the range of feelings triggered by these images. I want to know how you feel when you see an abandoned mask lying in your path. What is the defining emotion that is elicited? Disgust at the potentially toxic waste? Sadness from this reminder of sacrifice and loss? Do you, like me, feel a special poignancy from what almost feels like the loss of innocence when we find a small child’s mask by a school or playground?
What do you imagine the act of discarding the mask meant to the wearer? Rebellion? Political protest? Exhilarating freedom? Or maybe nothing more than mindless, reckless littering?
And how will our reactions to these image change as we – hopefully - gain distance from the pandemic and begin to regard it as part of our distant past. What different feelings do you expect would emerge if we were to look at these same images five or ten years from now?
This series uses art to memorialize these unique icons of our shared history and probes our individual emotional responses to objects that symbolize this unprecedented and unforgettable period in our lives.
