ARTidotes: How one artist used art to get through COVID-19
By hola | Published | No Comments
*Part of our series interviewing artists about how they have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic
The world of fine art can easily become a competitive space, with artists fighting for gallery representation and to reach critical or commercial success. But at its core, art is a creative outlet for expression and healing. This is what D.C.-area Colombian artist Carolina Mayorga aimed to accomplish with ARTidotes, a series of multidisciplinary exhibitions at a community art gallery.
Life as we know it completely stopped in March 2020 amid the outbreak of COVID-19 — and who better to capture the emotions, the tragedy and the triumphs of the past year than artists. The project began before the pandemic even started but took on a new meeting in the height of the outbreak of COVID-19.
“The name is terrific because it is understood in both English and Spanish. In fact, it has been a bilingual project because I have invited artists from other countries who speak Spanish — artists from Colombia, from Mexico,” Mayorga says.
This six month-long interactive series of exhibitions took over the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, D.C. and was managed by Lindsey Yancich. The goal was to provide a healing and supportive environment for viewers.
“I always do many projects that are specific to the gallery, so I came up with the idea of ARTidotes to be a larger, community project, with the participation of many artists and [to] use art as a tool not only curative for the people who reach them, but for the artists themselves. The project started much earlier, and then, when the pandemic started, it became more relevant, and even more important,” Mayorga says.
ARTidotes featured six in-studio multidisciplinary artists from different cultural backgrounds, and inhabited the gallery’s physical space during much of the six-month period that coincided with the height of the pandemic. Some installations featured combined elements of video, dance, drawing and painting. While there were capacity limits on how many people could come to the gallery in person to view the show, the majority of exhibitions and performances are still viewable on Facebook and Instagram.
Irene Clouthier, a Mexican multidisciplinary artist and writer based in D.C., curated the exhibition, in partnership with the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Of the 20 artists who participated, 16 of them women, each one worked to answer the question: “What is your ARTidote?” They crafted a work of art in response.
“We wanted to have a show where she was the number one female charge, meaning that most of the artists that we invited to participate were women,” Clouthier said. “So we made a very diverse, inclusive group of people.”
Clouthier adds that the exhibition included local artists from Polynesia, Iran, Chile and Colombia.
Carolina Mayorga’s exhibition combined drawing, painting and dance, creating a pink paradise of tutus and paint. Much of Mayorga’s work examines the complex identities of female-identifying immigrants and Latina women through the use of traditionally feminine mediums —including dance, song, cultural traditions and of course, plenty of pink. Her ARTidotes exhibition echoed some of her prior work, including her 2017 “Maid in the USA” sidewalk installation, “Self Celebration,” and “Lady Libertad,” another exhibition at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery.
“I have always had this idea that art should be for everyone and should be integrated into daily life, not only when we go to the gallery or when we take art class, but it is there. It is a healing tool,” Mayorga says. “What inspired me the most during the pandemic was drawing. I have done nothing but draw. So it is like a tool that serves us all. If you are an artist, if you are not an artist, if you are a child, grown up, or of any color, wherever you are from, the language does not matter, because art is a universal language.”
During a time when travel was restricted and in-person interaction was limited, ARTidotes connected artists globally and inspired them to learn from one another. The gallery served as an opportunity to learn more about other cultures and their own unique healing practices.
“I think we all found a need to share our own experiences with each other and find connections. We used the pandemic as a common ground affecting all of us as a way to understand each other’s ways of living,” Mayorga says.
The gallery featured several unique blends of artistic mediums. Heloisa Escuerdo’s exhibit combined painting and drawing and a live portion in which she painted a 1970s car that has been in her husband’s family for years. She painted on the car at the requests of the audience, some who participated from inside the gallery and others who tuned into the exhibition virtually via Facebook Live.
The series has one final installation — a collaboration with artist Edgar Endress set to be projected on the Inova Schar Cancer Institute in Annandale, Virginia during the last weekend of July.
“It’s amazing, because people who are in rooms, who are not allowed out because of whatever they are going through, they’re still going to be able to see and participate with the piece as well,” Clouthier says.
“The whole message behind the whole exhibition was to use the power of art to be a healing element for all of us,” She said, “because we all needed to heal from whatever we went through during COVID, and confinement, and all this time, and try to adjust to what normal looks like by now.”
The upcoming installation at Inova Schar will be posted to the Joan Hisoaka Healing Arts’ official Instagram.
—Madison E. Goldberg
Recent Stories
