Masks Can Be Beautiful...

Artist: Malik Seneferu: maliksart.com

​July 13, 2020. Hello everyone! It's Edom again, the new Clemmons Family Farm student intern hard at work! Hope you all are continuing to stay happy and healthy. I have enlisted three other incoming first year University of Vermont medical students (Kristen Wright, Mia Exume and Erik Zhang) who have volunteered to work with me, Lydia and the Clemmons Family Farm. We are compiling data about Black Americans' current practices, attitudes, motivators and barriers related to COVID 19 prevention and wellness. We are also looking at other COVID 19 prevention and wellness campaigns for Black/African-Americans in the US to learn from others before we dive into creating our own campaign for Black Vermonters with some of the Farm's collaborating artists.

We are finding a literal treasure trove of countless talented artists across the U.S. who are using their gifts to spread the message regarding COVID-19 and how to stay safe and well.

As we all know, we are not only living through a pandemic, we are also living through a turbulent social climate that puts many of us Black people between a rock and a hard place. While the systemic racism within medicine has put our Black community in a dangerously vulnerable position with COVID-19, the continued social injustices make it difficult for our community to follow some of the so-called "simple" guidelines, like wearing a mask, to protect themselves and their loved ones.

Today I am sharing a visual art piece that was created by artist Malik Seneferu in collaboration with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Malik created posters with colorful images and the words “Masks can be beautiful” to address many of our Black community members' concerns about face coverings (i.e. that they can perpetuate negative stereotypes of Black people as untrustworthy, suspicious or criminal). What I personally admire about Malik’s work is his message to change the way we all see masks-- from something that makes us appear threatening to something more positive: something beautiful or even a heroic form of activism. Although there are continuous barriers in society and medicine for our Black community, educational art work like Malik’s posters are a good start to normalize COVID-19 prevention practices for everyone. I can't wait to see what our collaborating artists create with us for our new COVID 19 prevention and wellness campaign in Vermont.  We are almost ready to have a meeting with them to debrief on what I've been learning and to start the brainstorming!

For more information about the artist and his beautiful work, visit: maliksart.com/