The cathartic and unifying art that is being created in confinement

Artists are now seizing this pandemic-induced opportunity to draw their interpretations of their life as they see it

A growing trend among artists on social media is to dream up the many possibilities of what Amabie looks like. A long-haired, three-legged, scaly Japanese spirit (yokai) with a beak, Amabie is a mythical mermaid-like creature that rises from the sea to foretell abundant harvests or warn of an epidemic. A town official reportedly saw one in 1846, after which news of the creature spread through woodblock-printed bulletins. Amabie, the story goes, told the official, “Show my picture to people for a cure.”

Artists are now seizing this pandemic-induced opportunity to draw their interpretations of Amabie. Using hashtags that range from #designfightscovid to #isolationart, cultural platforms as well as individual artists are also cataloguing a steady stream of art that is cathartic and relatable, besides being things of beauty.   

One of these works is a picture that shows lines freely running across the fragments of a broken sculpture, including the head of a white rabbit. The lines extend onto the watercolour work and under it as well. “I might never end up exhibiting this work,” says its creator, Jitish Kallat, “but it allowed me a degree of creative nonconformity.”

Goodwin's Work from Home

Having returned from the United States mid-March, Kallat had isolated himself in his studio for two weeks across the street from his Mumbai home. Kallat is not on social media, but this work, he hopes, will be the first step towards rekindling a project that had been lying dormant. The work is up on Kochi Biennale’s Instagram page, which is documenting how artists are dealing with isolation. The page is one of the many that has chosen to archive art made during a pandemic.

Jitish Kallat's photo-work featuring watercolours with fragments of broken sculptures.

There is also Bengaluru-based product designer and artist Natasha Goodwin, who is, through her MessyBun Comics on Instagram, illustrating the thoughts that have likely crossed everyone’s mind by now. “What if these times are not just for nature to heal? What if this is our chance to heal too? To take a break from the maddening routine…to stop, breathe & reboot...” reads the comic, which shows Goodwin’s protagonist, a girl with a messy bun, living a life indoors. “I try to focus on the positives with my art lest I start spiralling and get anxious, and that’s the kind of work I’d like to put out too,” says Goodwin. Another one of her comics, which shows her protagonist sitting in front of a laptop, has text that reads: “Opening a new tab or browser and forgetting what you wanted, is the new walking into a room and forgetting what you came for.” 

While Goodwin talks of how being home has given her the time “to zone out” and ideate, those like Mumbai-based Dhruvi Acharya have been making art almost daily and posting it on social media. Acharya’s watercolours, which document the psychological, social and physical impact of the pandemic, are titled Painting in the Time of Corona. These works are on sale through the Chemould Prescott Road gallery, which will donate 50 per cent of the amount collected for the under-privileged affected by the pandemic.   

Natasha Goodwin's Captain Stay Home

“There’s going to be a vibrancy in art in the near future,” predicts Bose Krishnamachari, artist and president of the Kochi Biennale Foundation. “As artists cope with the current situation, there’s going to be new ways of making art, new ideas originating.”

One instance of newer ideas coming to the forefront is the documentation of how time passes slowly for residents stuck indoors, as recorded by Goa-based Kedar Dhondu in a project called Lonely Residents. Another project, Share Your Quiet by Delhi-based video-artist Pallavi Paul, documents the unusual quietness of our neighbourhoods through audio clips. Both these projects are part of Goa-based non-profit centre for arts Sunaparanta’s “Surviving SQ (self-quarantine)” series.

Among the other significant projects that have come to light since the lockdown is Otherworlds. Helmed by Sumedha Garg and Nitin Bathla, this initiative works with a community of migrant workers, six women in particular, to make art. Since the lockdown began, these women in Kapashera, an urban village on Delhi’s periphery, have been using waste fabric collected from garment factories to make patchwork art to tell the stories of their realities.

While one artwork shows how a family deals with isolation when someone in a 12 sq mt house tested positive, another depicts people trying to get to the last of the buses that could have taken them home. “From asking ‘who’ll be interested in my story’ to developing their own language as artists, art has helped these women find their voices,” says Garg. For some, depicting the everydayness of life is in itself a portrait of Amabie, a healing for the times.