Through large-scale images of COVID-19 masks created by MIT students, the exhibit examines the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. The pandemic has severely impacted the global economy, exacerbated social inequalities, and highlighted the many planetary urgencies that can no longer be ignored. This exhibition features artistic COVID-19 masks created by MIT students in Azra Aksamija's class of 2021. The students were asked to design and fabricate masks that function as cultural prostheses that commemorate personal and/or collective pandemic experiences. While the virus survives and mutates through human transmission, the mask hides our facial expressions and individuality, ultimately erasing our humanity. The masks in this exhibition, however, reinscribe humanity with messages that are both critical and humorous. These masks show how to find strength, inspiration, and hope for the future in a moment when weakness, cynicism, and despair seem so easy to surrender to. This exhibition celebrates the work of students who create art to expose the inequality of the world during the pandemic and to amplify the voices of those who have been silenced.
Exhibition curator: Azra Akšamija
Exhibition participants: Xio Alvarez, Caleb Amanfu, Terry Kang, Daniel Landez, Felix Li, John Rao, Eva Smerekanych, Michael Tan, Isabel Waitz, and Diego Yanez-Laguna.
Exhibition installation: Emma Pearl Willmer-Shiles.
Keller Gallery Exhibition Team: Amanda Moore, Jim Harrington, and Jo.l Carela.
Special thanks to the MIT Department of Architecture Lectures and Exhibitions Committee.
Keller Gallery, MIT
Group exhibition of student work
The projects exhibited in this show were developed in Azra Akšamija’s classes in 2021.
Pandemic Pondering was supported by the MIT Department of Architecture, the Art, Culture, and Technology Program (ACT), and The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA).