Local students tell story of pandemic through facemask art – Owen Sound Sun Times

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By connecting them with one of the artists it is currently featuring, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery has given some local students the opportunity to have their voices heard through their unique works of art.

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The art gallery recently launched its initiative Emerging Artists Unmasked, which features more than 20 creations of senior art students at Hanover’s John Diefenbaker Secondary School, who were guided and inspired by contemporary artist Don Kwan, whose own face mask works are a major part of the art gallery’s current exhibition Facing It.

Tom Thomson Art Gallery curator of public projects and education Heather McLeese said Friday that the gallery really wanted to connect an artist with youth again, something that has been difficult during the pandemic. And as it turned out, Kwan, whose own personal experiences and challenges come through in his work, turned out to be the ideal teacher.

“He is a wonderful speaker, an amazing teacher and an incredible visual artist so just connecting him to those students who are young aspiring artists was really quite a special experience and definitely inspirational for them,” McLeese said.

In the exhibit Facing It, which is currently on display at the gallery, Kwan uses a combination of Chinese takout menus, joss money, silkscreen and inkjet prints, wire, glue and thread in a series of masks that address his own emotional response to the pandemic.

A third-generation Chinese Canadian, Kwan said his work was brought forth by the pandemic as he dealt with isolation, loss and racism toward the Asian community that was magnified during the lockdown.

Kwan said working on the Facing It exhibit and doing the workshop with the students “reminded me of the power of art and how art continues to connect communities.”

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Because the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the connection between Kwan and the students was done virtually. Kwan did a full artist talk and did an origami workshop with the students, going through the process of making a face mask out of paper, McLeese said.

Students were then asked to create their own facemasks, using various media and materials, to tell their own personal stories about how the pandemic has affected them and what they took way from it.

The results were varied and full of imagery and messaging. Some used newspaper headlines depicting the headlines of the pandemic, while chains and wire were prominent on others, illustrating that feeling of being locked in and unable to express their feelings. One mask depicts images of trees and grass of a local park, a place of escape when the pandemic lockdowns hit.

“Face masks are now a safety requirement, but they have become this way of expressing yourself,” said McLeese. “It was a fun project, a lot of sharing happened and a lot of the students really told a story through the masks they created.”

JDSS senior arts student Zanne Stassen created a mask that she said is about the stagnation of time and continuity as the world that felt off-kilter during the pandemic. She covered her mask in buttons that she arranged in a broken timeline “to show how the linear process of time feels disrupted; the buttons are wrapped with ideas that reflect this.”

“I have noticed pre-COVID a lot of our time was segmented into 14-day periods, such as the lending period for a library book or pay periods,” Stassen said. “I saw that this concept remained the same, but the context shifted to suit the times.”

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Stassen said she included personal family photos of past decades and a more recent picture of her cousin with her grandfather “to show the passing of time has little effect on the dynamic of human nature; children still laugh and people still go on.”

JDSS Visual Arts teacher Anne McLaughlin said the students embraced the task of using facemasks as the bases of their major art project, which examined their reactions and feeling about the almost two-year pandemic.

“I am very proud of my students as they went way beyond the parameters of the project,” she said. “The artworks produced are both visually stunning and visually provoking. The students want to challenge the viewers to look closely for hidden or not obvious meanings in their artwork.”

McLeese said she is hoping it will get people talking about the work and their own experiences during the pandemic.

Kwan’s workshop is available on the art gallery’s digital portal at tomthomsonartgallery.wixsite.com/digitalportal

And the facemasks by the students are running in tandem with the Facing It exhibition and can be viewed in the lobby at the gallery until the end of January.