‘Please Believe These Days Will Pass’: David Hockney, Tomás Saraceno, and Other Famous Artists Share Messages of Hope

As cities around the world shut down public life and people
self-isolate at home to slow the spread of coronavirus, artists are
beginning to find their voice in this new scenario. Several first
responders have been taking to social media or digital platforms to
show solidarity, offer advice, or just provide a message of
hope.

From his lockdown in Normandy, in Northern France, the
82-year-old artist David Hockney shared a new iPad drawing with the
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. The image of daffodils
in a field brings has an uplifting title: “Do remember they
can’t cancel the spring.” Hockney also shared it with the
director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, which has been
forced to shutter a survey of Hockney’s most personal portraits.
Its director Nicholas Cullinan posted it on his Instagram, writing
that Hockney is in isolation “but is still working constantly and
observing the arrival of Spring unfold.”

The Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno, who has
a major exhibition at the now shuttered Palazzo Strozzi in
Florence, posted a video on the Italian museum’s new digital
platform “In Contact.” The artist places his work Particular
Matter(s) Jam Session into the context of the ongoing
coronavirus pandemic to explain the pathogen’s movement.

Saraceno’s work uses a light beam to show the millions of small
particles floating in the air, discussing how our movements affect
the movements of airborne matter, and, in particular, this virus.
“… [W]e need to move slower,” he says. “We hope we can become
conscious about our actions, about how the air it moves today, and
how much our movement can influence [that]…”

Ai Weiwei also featured on Palazzo Strozzi, encouraging
viewers to “stay home… and stay together,” adding that the virus
knows “no border, no nationality, or different class, or religion.”
And Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson quotes from author
Rebecca Solnit: “Hope locates itself in the premises that we
don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of
uncertainty is room to act.”

Other artists are offering more practical advice. Artist and
photographer Wolfgang Tillmans took
to his social media to share a new
mantra with his followers: “Keep your distance, you protect me, I
protect you,” he posted, asking people to share and stressing the
two arms’ length rule of social distancing. “Remember to protect
your doctor: Only go when you really have to,” he adds.

Tai Shani is taking a more activist approach. The Turner
Prize winner released a song Tragodía on Bandcamp (a soundtrack to her VR play
by the same name), and all the profits from the sale of the digital
track (which is only £5 ($5.80)) will go towards food banks.
Donations have may plummet as some people in the UK panic buy
essential items. “This crisis has been ideologically veered to hurt
the vulnerable most,” she writes on social media. “Many people rely
on food banks in this greedy nation and food banks are already not
able to keep up with the demand and this will get worse. There will
be so many people in desperate need during this crisis, it is
horrific.”

The artists behind the Underground Museum in Los Angeles also
have the welfare of their neighbors in mind. The LA space is
launching a food “giveaway” for those who found the supermarkets
shelves stripped bare by panic buyers. The “Süpramarkt” takes place
on Thursday at a location on request.

South African artist Mikhael Subotzky has launched a
#coronafilmchallenge, inspired by another Turner Prize winner
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who made several of his works public online
while the museums in which they are on view remained closed.
Subotzky shared some works online and challenged three other
artists to make some of their work freely available: “Like many, I
am in self-quarantine and concerned about all of our cultural
institutions being forced to close. Let’s use this need to isolate
physically as an opportunity to connect and share in other
ways.”

The post ‘Please Believe These Days Will Pass’: David
Hockney, Tomás Saraceno, and Other Famous Artists Share Messages of
Hope appeared first on artnet News.