COVID 19 and Mythological Symbolism in Indian Folk Art

Indian Journal of Spatial Science Summer Issue, 2022:13(2) pp.54 - 60 , 2022

The present study is aimed to throw some light on the theme-based Durga Pujas and their relevance in the present context. The Durga Puja was first started in Calcutta by the Sabarna Chaudharis of Behala in 1610. Since then it was patronized by wealthy Bengali families and Zamindars over the years. The first theme-based Durga puja was initiated by the Jagat Mukherjee Park in 1959. Since then the theme-based Durga pujas along with the traditional 'shabeki' Durga pujas became well established among the Bengali community. The role of mass media and corporates spurred the growth of theme-based Durga pujas since the onset of the 21st Century. These theme-based Durga pujas are ever so relevant now since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as they bear a context and message regarding the issues relevant to contemporary times. A content analysis of the themes related to COVID-19 has been made. This foregrounds the fact that theme-based pujas are important in bridging the generation gaps, imaginations and the struggles of common masses in their daily lives in a wider context and also highlights the significance of Durga puja in the global context.

ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts

The paper presents examples of creative art during the pandemic that has affected everything worldwide but looks damaging to a show that needs people to visit and see the art. When the whole world struggled for life due to the pandemic, artists created/emerged with new ideas for new life.This article is a reflection of the inner and outer worlds, a heightened sense of anxiety and solitude, and the new way of bearing these utterly unfamiliar times; artwork from artists Jitish Kallat, Atul Dodiya, Nalani Malani, Asim Waqif, Bharti Kher, Dhruvi Acharya, Atul Bhalla, Thukral & Tagra, and Sameer Kulavoor who have created art during the lockdown. I approached this article using online art fairs, galleries, the internet, books, and magazines.

2020

The battle between the human race and the coronavirus started as an epidemic in Wuhan China, in 2019 by end of January 2020, there had been reports that almost 10,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 200 people had died. Sooner it was declared pandemic, having spread to many countries and eventually all over the world. Dealing with the unforeseen challenges caused by the COVID-19 and related impacts on health, economies, and even national security in the world became a joint responsibility of international governments. Our ways of life became altered through policies aimed to serve as preventive measures. Varying responses ranging from government proactive interventions and individuals augmenting government gestures by following guidelines of staying safe, this paper discusses the import of visual art in demystifying, recognizing, appreciating and visually comprehending how deadly coronavirus is. A total of 32 respondents that form the sampled population, it traces the diverse inv...

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics

Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics and Business Law, 2023

The unprecedented pandemic, which swept across the world in 2020, came with an avalanche of public health confusion and complexities. Every sector had to restructure its operational strategies in response t chaos. This paper argues that art was a major tool for combating mental, social, and financial difficulties during the pandemic. Adopting a qualitative approach to data gathering and interpretation, this paper purposively selects some groups and organisations within Nigeria that employed the creativity of the arts in combating the complexities of the pandemic. The paper highlights the strategies employed by these groups and organisations in achieving their specific aims during the initial spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper concludes that the arts should be recognised as a key contributor to the maintenance of social and psychological balance during the pandemic. As such, the arts should not be ignored as the world rebuilds.

Media, Seni dan Desain, 2022

Art is constantly inspired by what happens in its social and cultural context. The arts cannot be separated from life and the significant events in the world, whether it is a war, a natural disaster, or the spread of a disease an epidemic. Today, the whole world is witnessing the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, one of the worst in human history. The current scene has taken hold of artwork and the visual arts. The spread of the virus has inspired many artists to produce paintings, posters and artwork. This study aims to reveal the role and importance of Arab artists regarding the message they present regarding the situation at hand. In this study, the qualitative data was amassed as part of the methodology. The qualitative descriptive method and the case study approach are the primary approaches for the data collection. The results section focuses on the answers obtained from Arab artists through their artwork. It is held via a virtual exhibition. The discussion section focuses on a detailed analysis of the paintings. The study results concluded that art is a kind of documentation of all of the events that happen to humans. Art is a record of historical events, so it is a bright spot in times of crisis and darkness. Through these paintings, Arab artists have provided a light to those who feel gloomy in these difficult times, indicating that those in the Arab world focus on the unity of place, language and religion. Therefore, this artistic movement moves between all its countries so that no matter how harsh the situation, people will remain unified.

The COVID-19 Pandemic in Asia and Africa Societal Implications, Narratives on Media, Political Issues edited by Giorgio Milanetti, Marina Miranda, Marina Morbiducci, 2023

This article examines the impact of the novel Coronavirus pandemic on the traditional scroll painters, the citrakars or paṭuỵās of Bengal, and analyses the representations of the Coronavirus in the paṭacitra art of Medinipur and Kalighat. It argues that the adaptation of the narrative performances in the digital space marked an important milestone in the long history of the transformation of Bengal paṭacitras. Since the last decade of the 20th century, the market for paṭacitras has become increasingly urban, and even global. By opening up paṭuỵā art in the cyberspace and the social media, a direct contact was established between village-based scroll painters and a world-wide virtual audience during the first phase of the pandemic in India, a period which saw the creation of a series of pandemic related scroll paintings, reflecting shared universal concerns regarding human vulnerability. The initial optimism, however, was dissipated during the second, more virulent phase of the pandemic.

This is an English translation of the article Pandemia, arte y sentidos de Vida: Reflexiones desde Colombia, published in the journal El Ornitorrinco Tachado (2023). This paper emerges from ongoing research on the art works and exhibitions created in Latin America in response to the Covid-19 crisis which is understood not only as a health but also as a social, political and ecological crisis. In the first part, I reflect, from a Colombian perspective, on the different dimensions of the crisis unleashed by the pandemic, proposing that, more than a health crisis, the pandemic constitutes a political, social and existential crisis of profound scope and implications. I also examine the causes of this crisis in Colombia, framing them within the sui generis governmentality implemented in Colombia. In the second part, I examine several art works and exhibitions that respond to this crisis. I end by proposing that it is in the affective power of art that we find its ability to intervene in crisis contexts such as that of the pandemic.

Cultural Trends

In this introduction, we outline the context for the international emergence of cultural policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our article first offers a general account of how arts and culture have been affected by the pandemic, before looking at some of the state interventions (bailouts') to support the professional sector, and the present and future conditions they might be seeking to preserve or occasion. We then examine the UK as a particular case study. In rejecting a politics of "bailout" and "return", and in synchrony with others seeking to situate culture in a re-vitalised political economy, we argue that professional arts and culture needs to move forward with a "new deal" in hand; one that can enhance culture's potential and multipart value, as well as help the sector progressively engage with the many social, economic and environmental challenges ahead and beyond C-19. KEYWORDS Art and culture; green new deal; cultural policy; Covid-19; cultural work Before the deluge The COVID-19 pandemic is global, but the globe is not homogenous. Whilst we all recognise the signs from the newsfeedslockdowns, flattening curves, flat-out medical services, first and second waves, disrupted travel, disrupted employment, masking/notmasking, solidarities/ scapegoatingthese are refracted through very different political-cultural configurations. Readers will no doubt be all too familiar with the immediate and devastating impact of the crisis on the arts and cultural sector, and the wide range of responses (or not) by governments, and by various actors from the sector itself, across the globe. This Special Issue can only be a highly selective set of snapshots on the run. Written in August, by the time it is published things will have moved on. Perhaps "snapshot" is the wrong metaphor; these are diagnostics, aetiologies, tentative prognoses. For what this crisis is illuminating, in all-too-lurid detail, is how we think about and value art and culture; how we argue for their importance; how governments and public policy actors understand and value them, what they are prepared to do, on what grounds and with what capacity. In this Special Issue, we provide a selection of national and regional accounts, outlining how professional arts and culture have been affected by the crisis, some of the state

Journal of Postcolonial Writing , 2022

This article examines one strand of COVID art that encodes a heteroclitic cultural imaginary – and is irregular and unsettling. Banksy’s murals and paintings parody classical artworks, and are themselves parodied, so as to capture the new cultural realities of the COVID era. In the case of other artists, such as Chiara Grilli, the traditional heliotrope is parodied to convey a similar reality, like Banksy’s inversion of the superhero mythology. With the employ- ment of conventional disease-vector images, such as those of rats, Banksy brings into the human 5dwelling a “postnatural wilderness” showing the reversal of the disruption of ecosystems that had rendered animals habitat-less in India, with animals once again entering human spaces. Hence, the pandemic’s inversion of spatia- lized distribution of life can be seen as a decolonial and decoloniz- ing moment. Subsequently, the article highlights how COVID-19 art intervenes through its parodic, kitschy quality, in the discourses around the pandemic.