Let's think about how a small piece of cloth barring our noses and mouths has over the past year become ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. We have been asked to mask the face. And in doing so, we've been forced to face the mask. Now, my intention here is not to question the efficacy of masks as a public health measure because that's something I'm absolutely not qualified to do. But rather to explore the social, symbolic and material aspects. And in particular, its role as an ambiguous object. A kind of material disruptor that challenges many of our normative assumptions and values and modifies our behavioral patterns in particular ways. And we all know as anthropologists, that mosques can both conceal, but they can also reveal. And so I want to ask really how the mast challenge us and what domestics bones. But they expose about the assumptions surrounding our visual and social norms about the fraught relationship between Ka and containment or conformity, resistance, while censorship and freedom of expression. What do they tell us or expose about the unequal ways in which the pandemic is experienced by different groups. And about the fertility of global supply chains, and about some of the consequences prioritizing health and hygiene over the environment. Big issues posed by a small object.