In favor of containing the spread of coronavirus, many of the world’s major art institutions have closed their doors during the last a few months, from the British Museum in the UK and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Musée du Louvre in France. Theatres, concert halls, and cinemas also went dark and postponed their performances and lining up shows. In the United States, 41 Broadway theatres have been closed since March 12th, and they may remain shuttered until June since large indoor gatherings may be among the last forms of activities to resume when the pandemic eases (Paulson 2020). In the UK, London West End also said that they are expecting to reopen after June 28th, but if further cancellation is needed, they will keep their ticket holders updated (Clement 2020). Certainly, the closings have driven the entire art industry into a difficult time by messing up their lineup programs and impacting the financial stability of the art market, but meanwhile, it is also through this pandemic that people get to experience the importance of art to one’s mental health and social wellbeing during this particular time of need.
“The days staying at home and taking classes remotely have been a bit difficult for me,” says Christina Li, a junior from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in my interview. “Not only schoolwork is stressing me out, those negative information from social media also puts anxiety and depression on me. Watching shows and movies as well as the newly released recordings from theatres actually chased darkness away and brought joy into my life. Being immersed in those stories gives me a chance to temporarily escape from this little space that I have been stuck in for two months. I am in need of freedom more than I thought.”
In this time of crisis and isolation, many theatres and art museums, which normally required their audience to buy tickets and engage in the events on site, decided to open to the public through their online presence without an entrance fee (Kambhampaty 2020). Even though a live experience cannot be completely duplicated in virtual, it does open up more opportunities for art viewers and audiences than before. Now, for example, it has become easier and more affordable to enjoy an official version of Frankenstein produced by the National Theatre of the UK or visit the Palace Museum in China which would otherwise require a plane ride. Although the world is physically isolated, the existence of digital media and online performances have successfully refilled the spiritual emptiness caused by the absence of art from people’s lives.
"In this time of restriction, TV, film, books and video games offer us a chance to be mobile. To move around freely in a fictional world in a way that is now impossible in reality. Art connects us to the foreign, the exotic and the impossible – but in our current context, it also connects us to a world where anything is possible. A world out of our grasp for now." --Louis Netter, Senior Lecturer in Illustration, University of Portsmouth
ART IN THE COMMUNITY
While viewing arts brings brightness and joy to people during this time of self-quarantine, creating arts also ensures the mental health and social wellbeing of artists around the globe by fulfilling their self-esteem and belongingness to the art community. Artists, both professional and amateur, don’t create art only for themselves. Audience has always been regarded as an essential component across all categories of art industries because of their responsibility and ability to evaluate and promote. It is reasonable to say that the commercial value and art value of an artist would heavily rely on the existence of audiences. However, being isolated at home, audiences are now taken away from the stage, which results in an unprecedented situation for artists. Trying various new channels, artists are working strenuously in order to make the best out of their current circumstance of having no access to their audience. Since March 9th, a national lockdown had been imposed on Italy in response to the crazily growing pandemic of COVID-19 within the country. As a country famous for its classical music, Italian musicians, involving Aldo Cicchini and his friends, started with a trend of balcony concerts, both to show their support and solidarity and to interact with their audience – the neighbors (Mazzeo 2020).
“Here in my building, every time I played, despite the distance between us, we felt closer. It feels like we are a team, going forward together. And that's the power of music. And, when I play, I am company to people who live alone, particularly older people.” --Aldo Cichinni, violinist, Milan
(Ana Mazzeo 2020)
Cicchini’s beautiful performance brought so much spiritual power and resonance to his neighbors that the video of him playing Por Una Cabeza soon became popular on social media across the world, especially in China. Having been isolated at home for almost two months, Chinese musicians and music lovers were so intrigued by this beautiful melody that they immediately combined Aldo’s solo with theirs and sent various versions of recorded online ensembles back to him, together with tons of supportive words and encouragement to Italian people. When reposting the video on his Instagram, Aldo said in his caption, “this is the power of music that can overcome distance.” Being influenced by this tread, now there is a new art community established in the cyber world that provides people-under-quarantine with a platform to share their stories and words through art. This remote music collaboration is a miniature of how art has empowered each individual, enriched people’s life, and brought the global art community together in this time of crisis; more importantly, it is also a perfect example of how art, being cross-culturally conducive to the social wellbeing of each individual, also contributes to achieve a “healthier society” with the idea of community integration (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987).
Video: Chinese "Cloud Perform" with Italian violinist Aldo Cicchini (Aldo Cicchini)
ART IN THE HOSPITAL
The power of art displayed in this pandemic is more than what we already talked about in this article. Clinical biomedicine had long been based on a dualist thinking of distinguishing between body and mind, saying that a disease is “either wholly organic or wholly psychological” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). However, in recent years, more holistic and developed understanding about mind-body-society interactions has made biomedical physicians to think more of the connection between physical and mental health, which is especially shown in the treatment for COVID-19. In Wuhan, China, the newly built Fangcang shelter hospitals designed to isolate mild to moderate COVID-19 patients from their families provided an essential function of social engagement by organizing art activities (Chen et al 2020). These activities including singing, dancing, and Tiktok video making were intended to both promote patients’ recovery and alleviate the anxiety that a COVID-19 diagnosis and isolation could cause. According to health experts, a positive mindset is the key for patients with mild to moderate symptoms to recover because a stable emotional state is a basic requirement to keep a healthy immune system.
“Fighting a disease is as much a mental battle as it is a physical battle for an individual.” -- a comment posted under the video below
Video: Coronavirus medical staff dance with quarantined patients in Wuhan (South China Morning Post)
CONCLUSION
Facing the threats of coronavirus to our health and social safety, the response of social distancing rules involving stay-at-home order and the closures of nonessential business represent the power and control that institutions have over individual bodies. Under this influence of body politic, the idea of emotion seems to be of an unprecedented importance. Not only could emotions affect the way in which the body, illness, and pain are experienced, they are also projected in images of the well or poorly functioning social body (the representational use of body as a symbol of nature and society) and body politic (how our bodies are controlled and regulated as a polity) (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). This is the time that positivity and solidarity are particularly needed for us to cheer up each other and continually act as an indispensable one of this social fabric. Art, in this time of sickness and restriction, has provided us with a path to enrich the inner space of our thoughts and imagination, with bridges to communicate with the surroundings, with brightness to fight against virus, and most importantly, with a chance to rethink the role of our individual body as a member in the society.
Works Cited
Clement, Olivia. 2020. “West End Theatres to Remain Closed Through June 28 | Playbill.” May 5, 2020. https://www.playbill.com/article/west-end-theatres-to-remain-closed-through-june-28.
Kambhampaty, Anna. 2020. “8 Ways to Bring Art Into Your Home While Museums Are Closed | Time.” April 1, 2020. https://time.com/5803389/museum-closures-virtual-art-coronavirus/.
Mazzeo, Ana. 2020. “First Person: The Power of Art in a Time of Coronavirus Crisis | | UN News.” April 15, 2020. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1061792.
Paulson, Michael. 2020. “Broadway Will Remain Closed at Least Until June, and Probably Longer.” The New York Times, April 8, 2020, sec. Theater. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/theater/broadway-shows-canceled-june-coronavirus.html.
Chen, Simiao, Zongjiu Zhang, and Juntao Yang. 2020. “Fangcang Shelter Hospitals: A Novel Concept for Responding to Public Health Emergencies - The Lancet” 395 (10232): 1305–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30744-3.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Margaret M. Lock. 1987. “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1 (1): 6–41. https://doi.org/10.1525/maq.1987.1.1.02a00020.
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