A craftivist's ode to the face mask
Stacey Rozen |
TEDxJohannesburgSalon
• December 2020
Stacey Rozen opens her talk by reminding us that there was a time, not so long ago, when everything was normal: The Mask was a movie; the Venice Carnival was a masquerade; African masks were for rituals; and the N95 was a highway. All of this changed when COVID-19 arrived. Stacey’s own response to the pandemic as an interdisciplinary designer, illustrator, expressive arts practitioner, and craftivist, has been thoughtful and inspiring. At a time when the world was consumed by an overload of facts and stats, data and details, and even fear, she and her community of kindred spirits sent out a call to “sew hope, love, and cloth masks.” The messaged went far and wide, and craftivist across South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania, and then Australia and New Zealand, answered the call. What came out of it shows that when approached with a combination of mindfulness and a sense of story, something as simple as a cloth mask can be so much more than the sum of its stitches.