USA: San Francisco Bay Area metro operator BART is highlighting mask styles from around the world as part of a campaign to change the way passengers think about face coverings during the coronavirus pandemic.
‘Whether storytelling or celebrating culture, masks have always served a useful function’, the campaign says. ‘This time they can help us protect each other.’
Artist Tosha Stimage said ‘with Covid-19, mask wearing has been attached to disease and death. The project is about trying to think of masks in a different context.’
Posters produced for BART’s ‘we been on’ campaign show masks including geometric Bwa sun masks of Burkina Faso which celebrate the harvest season, and brightly painted and symbolic masks of Beijing opera.
‘This has been such a difficult time for so many people’, said Stimage. ‘I hope to encourage people to find ways to bring some beauty into this experience we are all navigating.’
