This Artist Couple’s Whimsical Video Artwork Illustrating the Power of ‘Social Distancing’ Has Gone Viral—See It Here

As much of the US locks down in response to the growing
coronavirus pandemic, an artist couple has created a striking
digital artwork, titled Safety Match, that
illustrates the importance of staying at home to help stop the
spread of disease.

“We want people to understand the severity of this crisis,”
Juan Delcan told Artnet News. “This is
very new and it’s happening very quickly. People have no idea how
to prepare for this and they are in denial.” Delcan
created Safety Match with his wife, Valentina
Izaguirre.

The short animated video by the husband-and-wife team shows a
row of matchsticks lined up like dominos. A first match is ignited,
and the flame begins to spread rapidly from one match to the next,
spelling certain doom for the entire group—that is until one of the
matches comes to life, stepping out of the line and out of range of
the fire.

Breaking the chain stopps the blaze, much the way that social
distancing will keep more people from catching COVID-19.

“Do your part and stay home,” wrote Delcan on Twitter, sharing the
piece in a post that has since been liked over 4,000 times and
shared over 2,000 times—including by actress Olivia Wilde, who has
herself amassed nearly 50,000 likes and over 18,000 Retweets for
her post of Safety Match. On Instagram, the 12-second clip
has been viewed more than half a million times with upwards of
84,000 likes.

“We knew people were going to watch it, but I don’t think we
expected this global response,” said Izaguirre. “We’ve been up
since 3 a.m. giving interviews!”

What’s been the most rewarding is the response from young
people, she added. “We get messages that say ‘hey, this really
helped me understand the situation.’”

The couple, who have been together ten years, met on the set of
a commercial. Delcan was the director; Izaguirre, the wardrobe
stylist. “We started making art and collaborating basically on day
one,” she recalled.

The artists have been making matchstick artworks for about a
year, with Izaguirre designing the sets while Declan does the
animation in Cinema 4-D. The couple typically shoots video and
records the audio on an iPhone, creating the final composite in
Adobe Premiere. They complete each work in a single day. (In
addition to animations, they also make paintings and
sculptures.)

“We wanted to do something that is very simple and speaks to
everybody,” said Delcan. “We all have matches handy, and by making
them look like stick figures, it just brings you back to the very
first drawing you did as a kid.”

But Safety Match marks a departure from the
rest of the series, which consist of lighthearted scenes including
matches in the gym prepping for a
“boxing match” and a match skiing down a mountain of sugar on
the kitchen counter.

The artists were inspired by their concerns about family members
in Madrid and other parts of Europe, which has become a center of
the outbreak. “I wanted to do my part,” added Delcan, who
comes from a family of doctors and nurses. “We thought maybe one
thing we could do is help people realize they need to stay
inside.”

New York City museums began
shutting down on
Thursday, but bars and restaurants remained open over the weekend
even as health officials recommended social distancing. Today, New
York City schools shuttered, and restaurants and bars will close as
of Tuesday. New government
guidelines announced this afternoon advise
against gatherings over 10 people.

The post This Artist Couple’s Whimsical Video Artwork
Illustrating the Power of ‘Social Distancing’ Has Gone Viral—See It
Here appeared first on artnet News.