By: Kaustubh Kumar
With thousands of new corona cases being discovered and logged every day, this pandemic seems to know no bounds and people of Delhi and Mumbai are not fazed by this. This increase in cases has sparked a fire in the young painters and graffiti artists to put their art on the streets to keep reminding people to abide by the rules of safety and stay indoors. There are many graffities of corona pandemic all around campuses of South and North Delhi and also multiple wall murals to in numerous places in cities of high corona cases.
A graffiti artist who goes by the alias of Mooz drew a mural on the streets of Mumbai stating “Not every virus needs a mask, sometimes just one step to save planet Earth! #plasticpollution” as his caption. He painted an Earth filled with bottles everywhere in different continents and oceans depicting that the pandemic is just a reminder of how we are abusing the planet and its resources and the consequences of those problems. This graffiti was made on earth day to cover major problems of the pandemic while making this mural and the plastic pollution portrayed in the graffiti.
There’s a recent mural of Aghori sadhus and different religious people praying in Prayagraj in UP which was picked up by the economic times of India which went viral. The underlying message in the mural simply said that follow the path of an aghori sadhu and exclude yourself from society in order to stay safe and pray to god or what you believe in to let the world overcome this pandemic and flourish again. This mural makes utmost sense to be drawn in UP as the major religious festival of Kumbh Mela takes place in Allahabad and is one of the most important pilgrimages in India. Using religious beliefs of Sadhus to incline the public who are against modernisation and don’t believe in covid-19 but much rather have a belief in a higher power or god itself, this portrays the ingenious inside the artist’s head and work he showed in this mural.
An uproaring trend in the folk artists community of Bihar and Odisha depicting folk paintings of different gods and goddesses wearing face masks when near to each other is sparking controversy and media limelight. The image of Krishna playing in the courtyard while other Gopis around him carrying their matkas and wearing masks and some Gopis churning milk wearing masks and sanitizer near them is raising questions in the society whether is this the way of life now. BBC did an article on these where numerous artists such as Ambika Devi and Apindra Swain showcased their paintings depicting the impact of covid-19. Ambika Devi is folk artist who specializes in Madhubani style of painting. She showed paintings of social distancing in villages. Apindra Swain uses 5th century techniques to draw mythlogical figurines wearing face masks.
A little upside to the pandemic for artists is that they got a free time and numerous online competitions in various social media under the topic of covid-19. These online events aim to generate more posters and visual content to be used by news and media. In VIT university, there was an online art contest conducted by the fine arts club of the university. Numerous paintings of nurses wearing masks and couples in retrospect kissing while wearing masks delivering a strong message to the university students were published online. The emotions in these paintings were clearly visible as the pain of a loved one contracting corona virus and the couple saying goodbye to each other until the person was treatment was something that cannot be put into words.
Artists all around the world are creating a profusion of art pieces not just related to covid-19 but to other problems as well that the world is going through such as global warming, plastic pollution, marine life destruction, etc. There’s beauty behind the madness of a painting made by any artist. It’s the job of other people to seek the message that the artist is sending because inside the world of art, every person’s understanding of the message portrayed by art is different and all of them are correct at the same time.
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