The Clan. Mixed techniques on a black canvas 80 x 60 cm by Shaharee Vyaas (2023).

The Clan is the third installation of a series of five #paintings I’ve made around a time that coincides with the yearly festival of #Halloween 2023. The frames contain some earlier reflections I had about the aftermath of the recent #pandemic. The stylistic style deviates substantially from most of my other works, although parallels can be drawn with the works that feature in my series Art in the Dark.

Long before the #pandemic arrived on American shores, there were debates over the politics of #mask wearing. More than a dozen states have laws barring people from covering their faces in public, most of them ordinances passed to deter the #Ku-Klux-Klan hate group. Those laws were suspended, revoked or not enforced as mask wearing in many states became a public health exigency. But as the pandemic recedes in the United States and emergency orders related to the pandemic expire, the question of what to do with the old mask laws is resurfacing.

Rob Kahn, a law professor at St. Thomas University in Minneapolis and an expert on #anti-mask laws, believes many of the laws are obsolete. But repealing them might have been easier before the pandemic, he said, before masks became such a political lightning rod.

Mr. Kahn said he did not know of any cases of #coronavirus anti-maskers advocating to keep the old anti-mask laws. But he hypothesized that maintaining them might be popular with the sizable number of voters who now think of masks as symbols of government overreach.

Covid-19 fueled also racism worldwide. Several political parties and groups, including in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Greece, France, and Germany have also latched onto the Covid-19 crisis to advance anti-immigrant, white #supremacist, #ultra-nationalist, #anti-Semitic, and xenophobic conspiracy theories that demonize #refugees, #foreigners, prominent individuals, and political leaders.