Ýrúrarí
A textile designer based in Reykjavík, Iceland, her work comes mostly through knitting; adding knitted 3D elements to second hand sweaters has been the theme of her work for the past years.
She started making my knitted masks in the beginning of April when the virus was at its peak in Iceland. Before the change of the everyday she was working on a big show of upcycled sweaters collaborating with the second-hand stores of the Red Cross of Iceland for Design March in Reykjavík. Design March got delayed until the end of June, and now after this mask adventure she’s putting her focus back to that project.
The idea evolved from her former sweater creations, where she transformed something normal and everyday into her art pieces, using second hand sweaters like empty canvas. But now face-masks are becoming such a necessity and part of our life she thought it could be interesting to translate her ideas into that form, inspired by current events. She was not expecting to connect well with the form of the face mask, but it makes sense, she uses forms of the face and expressions a lot in her usual work. So before really noticing it she had already made a small line of knitted face-masks. In her mind it was just a pet project to keep on creating and doing something, and she was not expecting them to become so popular and being written about all around the world.
She didn’t really make the masks to wear, in her mind they are more like wearable sculptures, not made for safety more as a fun approach to the rule of keeping distance, if you look scary enough people will stay away! The masks could work as fashionable covers over the real deal facemasks, but then, she’s not selling them….People have started to use her experimental DIY tongue knitting pattern, Sleik-zine, she has on her website (www.yrurari.com/shop). People with basic knitting knowledge can easily transform that pattern to something similar to ger masks. This is the time to develop some new skills and knitting has proven to be soothing for some people!
Ýrúrarí masks seem to give people some laughs, smiles and maybe the occasional eye rolling, which is just fantastic, this is a good time to spread out some joy while we keep on following all safety measures, take care of each other while we wait for this to end.
