Abstract
In this short animation, the artist and her daughter discuss wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her daughter’s statements reveal one way a child processed growing up with masks and masking.
Figure. Our Masks, 2021
This animation depicts a conversation between my daughter, June, then 9 years old, and me. We discuss what it is like to wear masks nearly all the time, and she talks about which styles of mask she favors. One key theme that recurred in conversation with friends and colleagues during the COVID-19 pandemic was disruptions in the everyday lives of our children. My family’s goal during this period was to maintain, as much as possible, a sense of calm and safety in our children’s lives.
In this animation, June’s voice and lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic are given the same importance and weight as mine. This equality is important to represent ethically and aesthetically, perhaps as a correction to when we fell short, culturally, by not always listening closely to how our children were feeling during those years. Looking back now, many of us consider possible “learning losses” our children suffered during those years spent learning remotely.
Perhaps other mothers find themselves and their own children in conversations like the one represented here in hand-drawn animation.
