Masks and Metaphors - Musings of Personal Responsibility

Over a year ago, I decided that I wanted to study again. Ideally, I wanted to infuse knowledge effortlessly and be accepted without having to undergo any rigorous application procedures into a university of my choice to study. I wanted to be noticed by an eminent academic and recognised for my infinite potential. I wanted to read. Read and digest with immediacy. I wanted to take beautiful handwritten notes using a variety of colours with which to write a world changing thesis.

But life doesn't work like that. Life is divided venn-diagram style into a set of 'privileges' and 'rights'. But the venn diagram isn't just 2 overlapping ovals. It is many, many more. And that is the central problem with 'human rights.'

Here in the UK, many, many people are protesting because they feel it is their 'right' not to wear a mask during a global pandemic. In Tunisia, 2010, a man called Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself because the police confiscated the scales he used to measure the weight of the fruit he was selling because he wouldn't pay them a bribe. He was protesting his 'right' to earn a living. In the UK, people are protesting their right not to cover their faces to protect others against something which might kill them.

The irony of protestors marching, having a voice, for this, for any issue which affects them demonstrates very clearly the deep asymmetry and glaring chasm of human rights across the world.

Mr Bouazizi killed himself. The injustices he experienced represent the injustices many experience in a world where monetary exchange (as the more palatable way of describing a bribe or 'baksheesh) for the basic human right of earning a living led to the Arab Spring. So I am interested in knowing what is being achieved by denying science so your face can stay marginally more comfortable for a few minutes in a shop. The mask is being used as a metaphor for a 'muzzle', for being 'silenced', and yet those using this ridiculous hyperbole seem to forget the one balance that we are afforded, and privileged to be afforded in a democracy - that of personal responsibility.

Self immolating is one if the most extreme historical forms of self protest. The horrifyingly powerful imagery of flames, of physically disintegrating to me represents the final stage of self-negating any rights one may have ever had on this earth to move towards perceived martydom. Fire is a metaphor used in a bid for freedom. 'Haraga' is Arabic for 'those who burn'. It is used as the metaphorical term for migrants who take small, unsteady boats, illegally from Africa to Europe. Unlike self-immolation there isn't certain death, but the label is such that those who take the journey have been burned by their home state and seek somewhere safe for the flames to be put out, where they can breathe something other than the acrid smoke of corruption and repression. In other words, a place where they are not denied the right to earn a living, a place where they may have a voice.

Unless you have lived somewhere which is not a constitutional democracy, there is no frame of reference to apply and freedom is taken very seriously for granted. Don't get me wrong, the levels of croneyism in the UK government are sickening and laughable at the same time, but that is where personal responsibility comes in. In a democracy, you are entitled to behave like a toddler who senses injustice, but why would you choose to?

It is within this asymmetrical framework that MOAS (Migrant Off-shore Aid Station) comes in. Starting as a small idea, a family idea, a boat, and people leaving the flames of oppression - they now operate in the Mediterranean and beyond to rescue those seeking the trust that is given by the state to make personal choices, even if they are the wrong ones. The work MOAS do is invaluable in saving and salvaging human life. 10% of all my artwork will go to this cause - to a cause that is the most profound humanitarian disaster of the last 20 years and receives only soundbite reportage most often involving only the pejorative.

www.moas.eu