In these harsh COVID times, nothing is more important than raising awareness about the measures that we can take to protect ourselves against this dreaded virus. One of these measures is wearing a mask. Sure, the majority of us hate wearing masks, but they are really important for our society right now, because they help us protect both the ones we care for most and our larger communities.
With her recently designed “Mask Up! Crush the Wave” flag, Freyja Zazu—who graduated from Camosun College’s Comics & Graphic Novels program last year, and who also contributed her Lovebirds comic to Nexus while she was at the college—aims to spread Dr. Bonnie Henry’s messages of being kind, calm, and safe, as well as getting people to prepare for the second wave of COVID-19.
“I’ve been a artist my whole life,” says Zazu. “Both of my parents are artists, so I was encouraged to do lots of drawing. I used to do more paintings but now I draw more cartoons and comics and do design stuff.”
Zazu is currently working at The Flag Shop downtown, which is where the idea for the flag started.
“My boss at The Flag Shop kept talking about the second wave and he said, ‘Oh, there should be a second-wave flag.’ I was not really sure what that should look like, and then I was at home and I just drew a funny little illustration, it was just a picture of a little heart on a surfboard wearing a mask, and I guess what I wanted it to say was ‘Wear a mask, and stay safe, and prepare for the second wave,’ because at the time it wasn’t really happening.”
So Zazu took the design to her boss, who said, “Let’s turn that into a flag.” Zazu says that the purpose of the flag is to remind everybody to wear masks and be safe.
“The purpose of the flag is just to remind people to wear a mask and be careful and that we don’t need to panic, we can try to crush the wave, try to be cool, do what we can,” she says. “We’re kind of in a unknown time so all we can do is carry on and do the things we know will help.”
Zazu’s flag has been getting plenty of media attention, which she is happy about (Zazu is donating $5 from the sale of every flag to the Times Colonist Christmas Fund; the 36” by 60” polyester flags are available to purchase at The Flag Shop for $24.95, and buttons and stickers are coming soon, according to The Flag Shop’s site).
“We printed a bunch of them just as a test, I guess, because we wanted to make them and just wanted to get them out there but we didn’t really know what would happen,” she says. “It took off a little bit more than we expected, which is really great.”
For Zazu, art can help get people through times like this.
“[To me, art means] making fun, beautiful things, or creating things that are inside of me and sharing them with the world,” she says. “Let’s use this time to make art and use the art to uplift people. Let’s use our powers to record this time and, if possible, uplift the world and carry us through this challenging time.”