Update: Scroll.in webpage has a report about how Covid-19 has affected sculptors in Mahabhalipuram, a town 40 km from Chennai, India
The Atlantic is a magazine with articles on culture, politics and current affairs in the USA. In May 2020, an article was published that deals with the situation of art and artists in times of Covid-19. The author contacted 3 artists by phone and asked them how they deal with lockdown and quarantine and how the pandamic has affected their work.
The text is freely accessible on the internet. Therefore, here in summary, only a few aspects.
Richelle Gribble, now at home in Los Angeles, has started a “Quarantine Life” project for herself: every day, she posts on the net a drawing of an everyday object that she noticed that day: a receipt for her purchases, a face mask lying on a sidewalk, sweet potatoes sprouting…
Her pile of testimonies of the days gets higher and higher, she says, commenting on the duration of the lockdown.
Other projects on the net are also mentioned and linked in the article, such as the “Great Pause Project”, where personal experiences are gathered, or “Window Effect”, where the participants take photos through a window in their home.
Barbara Liotta, at home near Washington DC, was also interviewed. We had recently presented her work with threads and small stones. As a comment on the situation, she conceived a new work: “I’ve been drawing and proposing a very dark, dark piece of exploded columns and shattered rock.”
She has come to terms with the fact that an exhibition of her works might not be open to visitors at present. However, she does not want to make a virtual presentation on the internet and justifies this with the special nature of her works.
Finally, Andrew Simonet, whom the author of the Atlantic article reached in Vermont. He philosophizes about the uncertainty in many respects associated with the pandemic and concludes that this new situation is nothing more than the normal case for artists.
“That is what we train for,” he sums up.
The Atlantic is published 10 times a year and has about 425,000 subscribers.
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(30.06.2020, USA: 06.30.2020)
