The impact of Covid-19 on artists. Part 3: building communities and finding inner resilience

09/04/20

Part 3: Building communities and finding inner resilience

In the third part of this five-part essay, comprising conversations with artists around the globe, we look at the impact the pandemic – and imposed isolation – is having on them in terms of community and inner resilience

In Italy, the first western country to be badly hit by Covid-19, Francesca Pasquali (b1980, Bologna) describes the situation vividly: “Helplessness, fear, confusion – these are just some of the sensations we’re experiencing at the moment. Some people are gone, others are waiting for a verdict, poised between life and death. Uncertainty walks beside me, beside us, hour after hour, day after day. However, I am convinced that in such a dark and sad period, we must find within us resources and motivation to make sure that everything starts again as soon as possible, with renewed enthusiasm and desire to do. DO! This is the imperative … My doing is in art, my welcoming refuge. I live in the countryside and my studio is a few steps from the house. I see it from the window as soon as I wake up. It just waits to get dirty, to be messed up! I am lucky to be able to continue working, pending receipt of new dates for the exhibitions that have been postponed. Postponed? Cancelled? Who can say with certainty? Today the phone no longer rings, no emails arrive except those that communicate that exhibitions, fairs and other events are postponed. The galleries are inactive; in Italy, culture was the first sector to be affected by closures. But we did not give up, we invented a new way of enjoying art, because the desire to know and see does not subside. Never before have social media and the internet been so vital a means of connection between the isolated self and the whole world. There is fear, it is tangible, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed by emotion. These are the moments in which a sense of community, of union, re-emerges, and the true values that keep a system up and running return. The same values that I try to convey with my work: involvement, activation, sharing, love for beauty. Culture is a common good, essential.”

Read the rest of part three here