STILL FACELESS. STILL HERE.

Reflections from Art of FACELESS on the Government’s Plan to Ban Face Coverings at Protests

When we founded Art of FACELESS back in 2012, we did it with intention. To explore identity through absence. To create a space where artists, writers, and activists could speak without being tracked, judged, or flattened into a data point.

Thirteen years later, we're now watching governments—of all colours—circle back to the oldest fear: the unseen. The unidentifiable. The person who refuses to be scanned.

Labour’s proposed face covering ban at protests is just the latest in a long line of measures aimed at silencing dissent under the guise of safety. But whose safety? For many of us, masks are not a provocation. They are a necessity. They protect us from illness, from surveillance, from retaliation. For some, they’re also an artistic or cultural statement.

We know what it’s like to be vulnerable. Many in our community are disabled, neurodivergent, or live with chronic illness. Some are carers. Others are simply cautious. COVID hasn’t vanished—and pretending it has doesn’t make immunocompromised people magically safer in crowded spaces.

Facial recognition technology is now routine at public events and transport hubs. Protesters—especially those already marginalised—risk being flagged, logged, and targeted later. And while some of us have chosen to reveal our faces for specific creative projects, that choice should always remain just that: a choice.

This isn’t about hiding. It’s about surviving—and creating freely, without coercion or fear.

Protest is part of the creative act. Its performance, expression, and resistance. It’s artists making the world visible in ways that statistics and policy papers never can. Silencing protest silences art. And banning face coverings during protests erases some of the most vulnerable voices from the conversation entirely.

Art of FACELESS will continue to stand with those who need to remain unseen to be heard. We support the right to anonymity, to autonomy, and to safety—in the streets, on the page, and behind the mask.

Still faceless. Still here.
—AOF