In May the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) commissioned four artists to make limited-edition facemasks, sold to raise funds to acquire contemporary art for public museums. Linder created a photomontage of a smiling pair of white teeth framed by red lipstick, collaged over a breast FIG. 4. Eddie Peake designed a series of pastel-coloured face silhouettes with lips almost touching FIG. 5. Both consider the role of mouths in our social life and their role in rituals of intimacy. David Shrigley’s design drew turbulent waves adorned by the word ‘emotions’, tapping into some of the anxieties of the pandemic FIG. 6. Metaphors of waves and floods are not only used to describe viral outbreaks, but also traumatic feelings of being out of control. Rather than thinking of our bodies as neatly sealed and self-contained, the pandemic has placed an emphasis on the way we are particularly leaky and interdependent.

Yinka Shonibare created his signature African wax fabric with designs sourced in Brixton market, but once appropriated by Dutch colonisers from Indonesian batik and sold to West Africa from the 1880s FIG. 7. Shonibare’s design reflects the connection between Europe’s history of racial capitalism and present-day violence and inequality. Speaking recently, the artist addressed how wealth generated by slavery and colonialism still impact Britain today.² The funding that contributed to the UK welfare state is part of such a legacy, despite the increasing restrictions imposed on those who can access concentration of wealth taken by imperial conquest.³Shonibare’s design can also be viewed in relationship to the looting of African masks. During the 1897 Benin Massacre, masks dating back to the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were stolen and donated to the British Museum. Calls for financial reparations and cultural restitution cannot be considered apart from the violent health inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic across the globe today.

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