Visual Manifestations of COVID-19 in Global Contemporary Art: Artistic Responses During a Time of Isolation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63931/ijchr.v7iSI3.576Keywords:
COVID-19, visual art, isolation, pandemic, global contemporary art, visual symbolism, emotional expressionAbstract
The article discusses the visual representations of the COVID-19 pandemic in modern art globally, and the ways in which artists around the world responded to the pandemic using symbolic and expressive visual language. While the pandemic was a health crisis, it was culturally, psychologically, and socially oriented. The study applies a descriptive analytical method in examining five pieces of art from various countries that present diverse aesthetic, conceptual, and contextual approaches. The key findings are that artists presented isolation, fear, resilience, and transformation through a diverse range of mediums ranging from digital media, painting, to murals. The article identifies the creation of a new art discourse grounded in common trauma and a necessity to visually represent the social and emotional cost of the pandemic. In this, the article positions the role of contemporary art to document but also make sense of emotionally global crises.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Sahba Youssef Yaqoub, Saba Youssef Yaqoub
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
