#11 Pandemic, Art, and Social Distancing

# The COVID-19 pandemic brings art to a standstill

The rampant virus has brought crisis to art as well as to everyday life.
Art festivals have been canceled across the world, and galleries have closed indefinitely.
Social distancing among people has also distanced them from art.
At a time when the pandemic threatens life itself, can art survive?

# How are artists living in the pandemic?

Korea Artist Prize is a major art festival bringing the public closer to contemporary art.
This year, as always, four shortlisted artists are preparing an exhibition. But social distancing rules, including a ban on gatherings of more than five people, make it hard for them to continue even the most basic creative work, and the exhibition opening itself is postponed.
To make things worse, the worsening pandemic forces the museum to close again even after the exhibition has finally opened. With their work on display but no viewers to see it,
what can the artists do?

# A solo exhibition on the other side of the world – the internet takes center stage

Despite the closure of most galleries worldwide, Ayoung Kim and Jewyo Rhii manage to hold exhibitions overseas. Using on-line platforms, they hold successful shows in Brazil and the UK. Exhibiting on-line frees them from temporal and spatial constraints, allowing them to reach viewers both in Korea and overseas and show their works to more people than before. Amid the pandemic, the proximity of art and viewers is maintained by a new channel: the internet.

# Galleries need to change to survive, too

Galleries work every bit as hard as artists to move closer to viewers. Social distancing rules may be stopping us from visiting galleries as freely as before, but they have created what might be called a new viewing culture, where small numbers of viewers visit exhibitions through a system of advance booking.

# Art in the time of corona: record of despair or symbol of hope?

This is humanity’s third pandemic. Disease outbreaks have threatened the survival of art before. But, each time, the efforts of artists have given birth to new and unprecedented art. Just like the miracle of the Renaissance after the Black Death, some despair provides the conditions for creation.
So what about art in our age? Let’s explore the situations of contemporary artists working to record hope, not despair.