Ýrúrarí Jóhannsdóttir’s face masks are trippy and cozy pieces of art.
You're unlikely to forget Ýrúrarí Jóhannsdóttir’s fantastic slobbering masks once you’ve seen them. The Iceland-based knitwear designer has been churning out 3D tongue masks that range from a balaclava-like piece—complete with a headband and a face mask—that has long, curled tongues popping out of them. Another is an enormous red mouth with knit-in braces that spans from ear to ear.
Jóhannsdóttir, 27, has been using tongues in her designs for almost two years. The Reykjavík-based designer started knitting from a young age and eventually pursued it during her studies in fashion at Scotland’s Glasgow School of Art. “I do love machine knitting, but I love knitting with my hands, and I always go back to strange faces,” she says.
Jóhannsdóttir began to translate her love of tongues into face masks when COVID-19 began to appear in Iceland. Currently, there is no government mandate to wear a mask, but citizens are still covering their faces as a precaution. “The government has only asked us to clean [our hands] well, keep our distance, and wear gloves at the supermarket. We also covered our mouths around people but used more scarfs or fabric,” she says. “Some people have been wearing masks, though.
As time went on, Jóhannsdóttir’s knit masks became more outré, like the cartoonish mouth of a green monster with jagged teeth, and then a lopsided mask with a squiggly tongue that reaches up across the face and touches the eye. At first, she received messages that her masks were unsafe to wear, but Jóhannsdóttir views her coolly grotesque tongue masks as solely an art project—more sculpture than clothing—that encourages mask-wearing and self-expression with masks.
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