Hyderabad-based Iconart’s ongoing exhibition ‘Covid Expressions’, both at its gallery in Banjara Hills and online (iconart.in), has 37 artists sharing their views on COVID-19 pandemic through 92 artworks. The gallery founder and curator Avani Rao Gandra is aware that these aren’t the kind of artworks someone would buy and display at their homes or offices.
“The pandemic has impacted every aspect of our life. It’s been four months since the first lockdown, and I sense a lot of bottled up anxiety among people. Expressing this anxiety through art is also a means of therapy,” reasons Avani.
In the beginning of the lockdown, she had worked on a series of paintings and displayed them online. She wanted to take it further, involving others in the art community. When she contacted some of them, she learnt that they had already done paintings and illustrations and were eager to share them.
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COVID Expressions is a collection of works by artists, photographers, illustrations by members of Hyderabad Urban Lab (HUL), a poet, a cartoonist, an Ikebana expert and child artists.
In 11-year-old child artist Dheeraj’s painting, the earth wears a mask and sheds a tear, trying to ward off the virus in its orbit, as a gentle hand of a doctor offers protection.
Stark illustrations by HUL present poignant images of the marginalised and migrant labour who bore the brunt of the lockdown; Sirajuddin’s line drawing recreates the disturbing visual of a child near his mother who succumbed to hunger, on a railway platform.
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The lungs struggling to survive is a recurring line of thought in some of the paintings. Elsewhere, miniature painting styles of yore have been reinterpreted to depict the importance of wearing a mask and their proper disposal. Sanitation drives by health workers also find a representation in the exhibition. Archana Rajguru uses intricate and elaborate embroidery to arrive at a visual that symbolises the simmering heat and the explosion in the wake of the pandemic.
The exhibition will continue till September 30. In addition to her paintings, Avani has also displayed an installation of a health worker in a PPE suit and the vestiges of a burnt human body, at the gallery. “We usually have a fortnight-long exhibition, but this time I decided to keep it going for two months so as to encourage people to come and visit the gallery. Social distancing norms are in place and we are allowing only one person at a time. Though we are exploring the virtual space more than ever before, I feel art is best savoured in real time,” says Avani.
Talking about the importance of conversations about art during these trying times, Avani shares, “A few artists I’ve known have gone back to their villages and taken up agriculture. In the art world, one success story inspires another and it’s a chain reaction. New artists try to pursue their passion against all odds. But when financial sustenance becomes tough, they go back to tried and tested means of livelihood. Many artists who had come to the city were struggling, and the pandemic proved to be a tipping point.”