The idea for Life Under the Pandemic Moon had its inception in my “Art Theory and Criticism” class at the Art Students League. Starting as a small group show for class members, the exhibition became a far-reaching open call to everyone affected by COVID-19 in the tri-state area and beyond.
The selection process was challenging for many reasons. Some works were well done and expressive, but addressed the creators’ artistic continuum more than they did the pandemic. In addition, although pieces reflecting the reality of self-isolation are important, I looked for art that more closely captured the direct effect of the virus. Finally, a good number of entries addressed similar subjects, and I chose what I thought were the best representations.
There were many works that visualized parts of our experience during this global pandemic. I was careful to select those that allowed the viewer to connect with the images on a personal level.
The breadth and depth of the visual considerations were amazing. We are experiencing new feelings and behaviors, while perhaps revisiting familiar attitudes from the past. Asking our extended artistic community to share their take on these changes is empowering and comforting. It allows us to accept what this plague has done to us and to confront it. It also reassures us that we are not alone and we are all going through this in some manner.
I know most of us are still wondering if someone in our circle will come down with this virus. This uneasy feeling of fearing the unknown is exacerbated by the fact that COVID-19 can be anywhere and everywhere. It is a real thing that seems unbelievable. We are accustomed to seeing what we fear, like an opposing army, yet fearing this sinister and invisible threat has become the new normal.
I am grateful to everyone who submitted work for this show. I hope they and all of us continue to create and live to the fullest under these extraordinary circumstances. And please consider submitting your work to the sequel, “House Arrest.”
Be safe and stay well.
"'Interiors During Pandemic' is a collection of views from inside, where life persists but it's hard to thrive. Memories of the outside world are murky, and experiencing it now is out of reach, but we need to remember the end of this experience is coming, and it will be bright. I created this series of photos almost out of resentment for people who live in the suburbs and own their own green space. I also wanted to reflect on how we invest in making our interiors beautiful, but it doesn’t compare with the natural world, which New Yorkers take for granted."
"I am a medical doctor in Manhattan. I discovered the Art Students League in medical school during the 1980s, and art has kept me sane and centered in the ensuing decades. These multimedia works report some of my observations in this great city in these uncertain and worrisome times of the pandemic with COVID-19."
"The Brazilian National Health Service is encouraging us not to leave our homes during the pandemic experience. In this time of hardship, many people are asked to take hygienic precautions, but they lack the conditions to follow the rules, having no house or other basic social services and infrastructure.
This drawing illustrates how indigenous peoples in Brazil suffer from higher rates of chronic diseases and underlying conditions that can put them at a greater risk of severe complications from COVID-19. This artwork is meant to remind us how history repeats itself. Fifteenth-century Europeans had already introduced smallpox and other diseases to the New World, decimating upwards of eighty percent of the indigenous population. Jesuits used to perform the role of physicians during those times. In addition, the 1918 flu pandemic wiped out entire villages in Brazil."
"The pandemic has created an opportunity to delve deep and spend time thinking about the importance of family, friends, community, relationships with our loved ones, and the earth. Floods depicts a dramatic visual describing man's damage to the earth as felt by so many during the recent natural disasters worldwide."
"Work from years or months ago has changed. Not the work itself, of course—the strokes remain the same—but without doubt our relation to it. I now know in this reality that which I imagined two years ago in a painting of an empty street in a park in a city — the lights glowing from the windows, then as a symbol of people at home. This is what the parks and cities do look and feel like to me now.
A landscape reminds me now not so much of the escape promised by nature, but of its unconscious and eternal movement through time as our chaos unfolds inside of it. Nature will remain beautiful and true."
"This painting was part of the Eevrson Museum Project: That Day Now: Shadows Cast by Hiroshima. The source material for the painting are the documentary photos taken by Scandinavian photographer Christer Strömholm in Hiroshima in 1963, about eighteen years after a nuclear bomb was detonated over the Japanese city. This painting is now a direct reflection of the current state in the world. Something unseen and dangerous."
"This quarantine I've taken time for self reflection, literally. I'm making a self portrait a day without outside noises and am inviting myself to get lost in my own thoughts while getting lost in my own visage. Maybe it's self-care, maybe it's narcissism, maybe it's glee in an extra bit of time in my practice to devote solely to myself to escape the craziness, if only momentarily.
If this is the form my quarantine silver lining takes, I'm accepting it."
Before the pandemic, mother/daughter team Joan Fitzsimmons and Alexis Neider collaborated on a series of works and installation/performance called "Cakes and Conversations." The meaning has changed in poignant ways: baking is now a form of self-care; touch and ungloved hands are demonized; and families, such as Joan and Alexis, cannot visit each other."
"This works depicts different aspects of the times we live in. It looks into the neoliberal plague and how social resistance arises despite of physical social distance. It highlights sovereignty of all the people and our innate equality that is not reflected by the dominant political system. The urgency of life cannot be sustained by a profit-based economy. It reassesses geopolitics, as the destructive role of imperialist countries is showcased."
"Acting as counterpoint to my love and connection to the natural world, the work Stain references the unabated and alarming impact humans are having on the landscape. We are clearly at a crux in a road: the climate crisis is an overwhelming reality. The vast majority of the human population lives in cities and has little connection to the land. Big industry and monoculture have taken over. There needs to be a change! But are we too late, or can we as a society make strides to save the environment? I wonder how art can make a difference."
"'Involuntary Sculptures (COVID-19)' is a series of abstract photographs taken of disinfectant wipes stained and reshaped by the process of sanitizing surfaces exposed to the coronavirus. Inspired by Brassaï’s abstract studies from the 1930s, the series holds that, in the fevered and unthinking act of cleaning, the underlying anxieties of those quarantined during the pandemic acquire tangible form and become subject to direct photographic representation. Lysol wipes are estranged despite their immediate familiarity, and in their defamiliarization come to stand metonymically for the unstable conditions of knowledge that have emerged in the current crisis."
"During lockdown I’ve learned to sit with ‘what is’ as I turn inwards to my heart. My images began with graphite drawings from life, which I then finished digitally. They are detailed and imply sitting time. I’ve been drawn to the New York City street lamps, shaped like a bishop’s crook. They are symbols of guidance in the dark of night on empty streets. My heart also goes out to those unable to sit with their fragile, elderly loved ones. This is a time when love means to stay away."
"I find the empty New York City streets the most powerful image of a city in isolation. Once so energetic, constantly full and noisy, now abandoned and quiet—a reprieve from our totally hectic lives, but at what cost? I am deeply anxious, but also curious about how our lives will shift and how we will treat our neighborhoods in the future."
"As a medical technologist working in clinical microbiology, my colleagues and I are entangled in this careless pandemic along with all other essential workers. After twenty consecutive nights of conducting SARS-CoV-2 tests on hundreds of patients, I needed to recover from my own physical and psychological fatigue by extracting meaning, not just viral RNA, from my current experience. Late one night, I looked at the familiar biohazard labels in the lab and realized that they were an undiscovered medium—one that captures the intricate balance of being both a frustrated artist and scientist."
"Gender matters. The murder at birth of baby girls. The abortion of thousands of healthy fetuses because of their gender. The abduction and rape of adolescents forced into prostitution. The exploitation of child labor. The physical abuse of domestic workers. The murder of young women whose dowries, or performance as wives, does not match their husbands’, or their husbands’ families’, expectations. Women abused. Stories told. Photos taken.
My current project "Beloved Daughter" is a perpetual work in progress. Using a specific day from the New York Times Obituary page as my surface, I choose an image from a photograph, I remove myself from my first impression and work back to the original image. There is immediacy from choosing the image to the placement of media—a close-up interpretation—creating another separation from the original snapshot. Working in multiples, these objects are small and intimate, emphasizing tension between observation, image, and our emotional reality—a commentary which is always changing."
"Exhaling clouds from / the sky of my unmade bed, / I don't fly anymore. / Every moon, a panic dream. / Every sun, hope and / anxiety for our / heroes. / In this crushing spell / of quarantine, / so much suffering unseen / and yet so much / love unseen. / We survive in whispers / until our true voices return, / voices changed by this time."
"I think of the shrub and the tree as symbolizing two people, and their cut branches can be seen as symbolizing the pain that confinement is causing them. They can also be seen as symbolizing other kinds of pain, whether caused by the pandemic or not. Also, the ropes connecting the shrub and the tree can be seen as symbolizing the relief brought by remote communication (phone and video calls, for example). They can also be seen as symbolizing the connections between two people generally, before or during the pandemic."
"As an illustration major and young college student at The School of Visual Arts, this pandemic has certainly changed my life. All my classes are now done over Zoom, and studio space is now restricted. I am now working at home either in my bed or on my bedroom floor. Furthermore, I have been using digital media more lately because of its convenience. Our world is now connected with modern technology, but I have truly learned that FaceTiming someone will never replace true, in-person conversation. I hope these artworks communicate feelings of isolation, desolation, stir-craziness, and loneliness."
"These unprecedented times of quarantine and social distancing leave many of us in a deep state of reflection. These portraits have warped, layered psychologies, fluctuating in mood yet forever alone in solitude. They offer a refuge, a sense of companionship and empathy, for they too are confined and introspective."
"During this pandemic, I have reflected on the importance of relationships and interactions with other people. Social distancing, although beneficial, has affected my routine of visiting close family members and friends. My work reflects on the importance of the relationship we have with our families and the various intimate moments we share in our homes. Currently, some are using this time to spend more time with their immediate family members. Others do not have the privilege of doing so. My work is celebrating, reflecting, and longing these moments people are sharing/have shared in their homes with their family."
"This series was started in the early days of the pandemic. I watched as the busy nightlife corner went still and dark. The frame of my window is present in each painting, reminding the viewer that they are inside, looking out. A longing but also a voyeuristic curiosity of what is going on above the vacant bar, in individual apartments, where only the color of the lights suggests the activity: blue glow of a TV screen to the yellow glow of lamps to the darkness of sleep, I invent scenarios of all the occupants of these colored rectangles."
"I often wonder if I have a voice... Or if I'm allowed to voice my opinion or share my story without being judged. It has become so easy to communicate with each other across multiple social platforms, yet so many of us are full of preconceived notions and stereotypes. Having a voice and being heard are two very different things."
"While the harvesting of grains like wheat and corn is mostly automated in the United States, fruit and vegetable farmers rely on seasonal guest workers to pick their crops. Policies implemented in response to the coronavirus could affect the pool of farmworkers available, specifically school closures and changes in visa processing for H-2A farmworkers—migrant workers hired to fill temporary or seasonal agriculture jobs lasting less than one year. H-2A farmworkers make up 10% of crop farmworkers in the country. The Department of State’s visa processing policies in response to the coronavirus that limit processing to returning workers could reduce the number of H-2A workers who can be employed on U.S. farms by as many as 60,000."
"In February 2020, I started working on an art project focused on the migrant crisis in Europe. Inspired by Toile de Jouy motifs, vignettes allowed me to build a narrative illustrating the plight of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better life. On March 11, WHO declared the Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. International travelers, in search of greener pastures, had accelerated the virus spread. Gradually, governments worldwide closed borders, imposed travel bans… My “Migrations” project then expanded to include COVID-19, which is fast changing the way we all live."
"This pandemic affects the billions of people on earth. One of billions has gotten the virus. Now they have to deal with it. The loss of a loved one could occur under the circumstances without believing it could happen to you. That's when the reality finally hits you; the world is on its blue period. The depressing truth of the universal COVID-19 and the impact it has on any random person at an unexpected moment. They undergo either one, two, or all of these stages: Getting the virus. Losing someone to the virus. Hurting over the truth of the monstrous virus."
"The paintings were created in a daily ritual and humble meditation to communicate the feeling of comfort, sorrow, hope, or calmness, knowing many others are putting their life out there to allow me keep doing my part as an artist. The practice helps keep me centered at the moment, and not stress over how long this crisis will last and all the associated outcomes there might be."
"About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position; how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just / walking dully along; / How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting / For the miraculous birth, there always must be / Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating / On a pond at the edge of the wood: / They never forgot / That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course / Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot / Where the dogs go on with their doggy / life and the torturer’s horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree."
"The past month has been stranger than fiction but it is our reality. There is an eerie emptiness all around, but instead of pushing away from it I found myself moving towards the emptiness by allowing small moments of it to sweep through me. As a country we have been through difficult times, but we were able to connect physically with each other and now we are social distancing, and sheltering in place—two things especially New Yorkers aren't too familiar with; these images represent the silence that we are all experiencing alone together."
"One a larger number of sketches about my quarantine life. I sketch as relaxation, giving my brain and hands the pleasure of drawing. Some are personal, others maybe more universal. I choose paper and India ink because is opposite to the digital, what I was doing as an artist before the quarantine. Also, I choose India ink because of the history of the media. It was invented more that 3000 years ago in China. According Marco Polo, the Chinese produced it from ashes of animal bones and for this reason it was prohibited to trade in the rest of the world because of the fear of diseases."
"One in a series of photos taken during my artist residency in Japan, March 2020. The first fourteen days I was in quarantine at the residency because I was coming from Korea. I was uninvited two days before my arrival but showed up anyway. I was required to take my temperature twice a day for fourteen days. I recorded the numbers on band-aids."
"This piece captures a quiet moment with my small family self-isolating in Brooklyn. While the fear and anxiety are ever-present and real, they are kept at bay by the hope, the faith, and the love that seems to grow each day that we’re huddled together. A pause on everyday life seems to be opening a world of opportunity and goodness, if we look for it. That’s what this painting is about."
Quiet, / for sure silent, / inside? / Raining, / umbrella? / Can’t find it.
We are going through something that feels so unreal. We are not used to staying home isolated with ourselves. The camera with a long exposure captures the soul's impossibility to stay still. It’s still at home but out there, there is a storm going on."