Life During Wartime Portfolio - 2021
'On March 11, 2020, the world changed. On that day the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. As the sun rose, people shook hands and drank coffee with strangers; by sunset, offices, schools and churches began shutting down, while hospitals began filling up.
On June 6, the USF Contemporary Art Museum opened Life During Wartime: Art in the Age of Coronavirus. Its first major virtual exhibition, the show asked a select company of international artists to respond to the overwhelming realities of living through a global health crisis. Fifty-four artists answered the call. Each of their contributions, displayed on the museum’s dedicated digital platform, painted a picture of a world in turmoil, while also providing images of hope, humour, and optimism in the teeth of a planetary emergency.
As an epilogue to the exhibition, USFCAM engaged seven artists from Life During Wartime to contribute a single print each to a benefit portfolio. Their work, captured in these pages, commemorates both the difficulties of living through a pandemic and art’s spectacular resiliency during times of crisis. The artists included here muscled through catastrophe. They are Sebastiaan Bremer, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Ellen Harvey, Mark Thomas Gibson, Deborah Kass, Hew Locke, and Narsiso Martinez. When things looked darkest they made art. To paraphrase Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, that is how civilizations heal'.
— Christian Viveros-Fauné, Curator-at-Large, USF Contemporary Art Museum
Medium: Screen printed paper folio containing seven archival pigment prints with colophon
Size: 19-1/4 x 13-1/4 x 1/4 inches
Edition: 50
Price: $3,000
The full portfolio can be viewed here and is available by contacting Graphicstudio.
