TORONTO -- Since the novel coronavirus swept across the world, face masks of all shapes, sizes and colours have hit the market to help people protect themselves and others.

But one artist has created a face mask that is not meant to be worn, but to be framed.

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is the man behind the concept: a series of medical masks that have been printed with special designs. The masks are intended to raise money for charity and also make a statement about the world.

In an Instagram post on May 28, he wrote that a person’s “small individual act becomes powerful when they are part of the social response.

“An individual wearing a mask makes a gesture; a society wearing masks combats a deadly virus. And a society that wears masks because of the choices of individuals, rather than because of the directive of authorities, can defy and withstand any force,” the post reads.

“No will is too small and no act too helpless.”

Weiwei’s life has been a journey of activism through art. It was no different when he set out to make a COVID-19 mask.

“I printed one mask to show my son and I put it on Instagram,” the artist told CTV News. “Suddenly, a lot of people asked me where to get it. They loved it.”

An Instagram post from April 28 shows a simple medical mask with a black and white print on it of a defiant middle finger -- an Ai Weiwei classic.

A single mask goes for US$50 on eBay, where Weiwei has put them up for sale. The proceeds from the masks sold will be split equally between three charities: Human Rights Watch, Refugees International and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders. MSF has created a special COVID-19 crisis fund to raise money for their emergency pandemic response across the globe.

Some of the other designs printed on Weiwei’s masks include sunflower seeds, handcuffs, a bird, a crab, and a skeleton hand giving the middle finger, among other images.

Throughout Weiwei’s long career, his work has been meant to challenge and provoke. The artist became an outspoken critic of China after the government censored information about a catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008, which killed tens of thousands.

Weiwei’s art installation called “Snake Ceiling,” which came to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2013, drew inspiration from this tragedy. The piece utilized hundreds of backpacks hung from the ceiling in a twisting pattern to symbolize the more than 5,000 students who died in the earthquake when their schools collapsed. Government officials would not release the official death toll for students until a year after the earthquake, and activists still believe the true death toll is higher.

In 2011, amid a government crackdown on political activists and dissidents, Weiwei was arrested in China for tax evasion and spent 81 days in jail and four years under house arrest. He was allowed to leave the country in 2015, and now lives in the United Kingdom.

In some ways, he believes those difficult years prepared him for living with a pandemic.

"I'm very familiar with this kind of isolation since I was detained in China and also my family was exiled when I was born,” he said. “So, this is nothing new to me."

With museums and galleries under lockdown, creating these masks is another way to connect, he says. In difficult times, art is an essential service.

"I need art to fill out the gaps," he said.

The middle finger masks are listed as woodcut prints on eBay. This is a technique where an artist shallowly carves an image in relief into a block of wood. Ink is then spread over the design and the paper for the print -- in this case, a mask instead of paper -- is pressed carefully to the ink to transfer the image.

A similar effect can be achieved by carving soft linoleum as well, called linocut printing, which Weiwei can be seen doing in an Instagram video posted on May 28 that advertises the masks.

Although the original designs were carved in wood or lino, in order to produce more copies of the artwork, the designs have been silk-screened by hand onto the masks. 

Those who buy one of his masks can wear it if they want, Weiwei said, though the eBay listings note that they aren’t meant for medical use. But he expects most people will simply want to collect and preserve it.

A one-of-a-kind pandemic souvenir.