Born 1974, Sorocaba/SP – Brazil. Based in Lisbon. Multidisciplinary artist.
My art practice changed completely during the pandemic
Ana Letícia Barreto
The pandemic turned my world and art practice upside down. As an art teacher, I had just two days to adapt the classes to the online format, without any previous experience, which substantially increased the amount of work. Emotionally, everything was really challenging…
The pandemic showed us how connected we are. We are just a tiny thread in the huge web of nature. We have experienced a moment of unpredictability, and we have to learn to take each day as it comes to be able to put our pieces back together again. If we understand this moment as an unprecedented wake-up call, we have the chance to rethink our behavior and our relationship with our common home and all living beings.
In this project, I addressed my feelings during these challenging times we are living: the fear, the awareness of impermanence, the insecurity, the skin hunger, the nostalgia of a reality that no longer exists and my reactions to the news from my mother country Brazil.
The pandemic turned my world and art practice upside down. As an art teacher, I had just two days to adapt the classes to the online format, without any previous experience, which substantially increased the amount of work. Emotionally, everything was really challenging.
On March 13th (2020), two days before the official lock down in Portugal, the school I work for had to close because two students were diagnosed with the virus. For several days the National Health Service phoned me twice a day to control my symptoms. I lost loved ones because of the virus. Due to the present situation, I have fewer students and less money. Artists have faced a hard time getting any Government support. Exhibitions and events were postponed or canceled. The future remains uncertain. To try to balance this emotional roller coaster I started to do collages. After a year I had already done almost 100 of them.
The project consists of two series of collages: The Quarantine Diaries and Ionesco´s times. In my work, I mix collage, painting, drawing, and embroidery, playing with paper fragments until poetry emerges. In this project, I addressed my feelings during these challenging times we are living: the fear, the awareness of impermanence, the insecurity, the skin hunger, the nostalgia of a reality that no longer exists and my reactions to the news from my mother country Brazil.
The collages also reflect my difficulty in dealing with a kind of reality that sounds like an Ionesco´s play, but in which certain political leaders are rhinos too big to ignore. The things we learned to call reality are breaking apart, are dissolving like ink on water. I feel like I´m putting together the pieces of the puzzle of my life. Like the Brazilian writer, Guimarães Rosa said, “To live is to tear and to patch up.”
–We had spent more than a year completely immersed in the virtual world. Almost all our relationships are intermediate by a screen. The ones among us who are lucky enough to do home office and be safe at home had now no separation between work and personal life. We study online, we do sports online. We connect with friends and family through different virtual platforms. How will this new form of relationship with work and personal connections influence our lives after the pandemic is under control?
Given the current situation, we often hear that we are all in the same boat. But the pandemic has highlighted our social inequality more clearly than ever before. Despite all the suffering and challenging the pandemic has inflicted all over the world, there are still people that chose to believe in conspiracy theories and fake news. The constant lock-downs were fatal to several small and medium size businesses. Many people lost their jobs. All these represent a real threatening to democracy.
Art project #365daysafter