MASK

In response to the global COVID-19 crisis, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei launched MASK (2020), an art project that merges artistic practice and humanitarian action. While Ai was in lockdown in Cambridge, UK in 2020, he found inspiration from the face mask, one of the most recognizable symbols of the pandemic. In the MASK project, each non-surgical polypropylene mask is hand-printed in Ai’s Berlin studio with ink images drawn from his existing body of work. This includes iconic motifs such as the middle finger from his iconic Study of Perspective (1995–2003) series, where Ai flips the middle finger against different landmarks across the globe, and the sunflower seed from his monumental Sunflower Seeds installation (2010) at Tate Modern. These aesthetically minimal visuals contain dense symbolic meaning. The middle finger, for instance, is a recurring emblem of dissent, while the sunflower seed signifies collective strength and the dignity of the masses—both ideas resonating strongly amid the global health emergency and the political fallout during the crisis.

With curation by Alexandra Munroe, MASK eventually functions as charity art: 10,000 of these wearable artworks were sold on eBay, with proceeds directed to COVID-19 relief efforts through Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, and Médecins Sans Frontières. This initiative is both an ethical and creative art that offers a gesture of solidarity in the face of isolation. As with much of Ai’s oeuvre, the act of distribution is part of the artwork’s meaning. By choosing eBay as his platform, he bypasses traditional galleries, democratizing access while also exploiting the infrastructure of global capitalism to raise funds for crisis relief. It is also worth noting that the masks produced in the project are nonsurgical, which subverts the original functionality of the item. The mask stands for a mixture of symbolic meanings, as a wearable protest, a collector’s item, or a philanthropic tool. In doing so, Ai interrogates the material politics of the pandemic, critiquing pandemic capitalism and questioning who gets protection, who profits, and who suffers.