Coronavirus (Covid-19) - How Is Street Art Reacting?

Coronavirus or Covid-19 like many people call it, is without any doubt having a huge impact on our society worldwide. Other than its main impact on us which, unfortunately, is the one that attempts at our health, the Coronavirus is behaving like a snowball, affecting many other areas of our lives as well. In fact, many of us are forced to adapt to some radical lifestyle changes and to enormous uncertainty, all factors that ultimately caused also a huge economic distress.

But within this terrible Covid-19 situation that is affecting every one of us and that we hope finishes as soon as possible, we, as street art and graffiti fans, were curious to discover if and how the street artist around the world are reacting to this unusual and unique situation. So, we started researching the internet with the hope to find some street artwork with Coronavirus as a theme, that could offer some new point of view on the situation, or that we could simply enjoy as piece of art in this difficult time.

Let´s start with a new street artwork recently appeared on the walls of Dublin, the artwork was created by Rathmines from the collective SUBSET, which is a group known for art works dedicated to a various range of social issues. The street artwork has been created as a response to the Coronavirus pandemic and its title is Coronavirus 2020: The Virus Era. The artists question the Government's "restrictive and reactionary approach to the crisis" and say that Ireland needs to take "innovative and bold steps", looking to the lessons of countries such as Taiwan and South Korea.

Let´s now pass to the street artwork from the Italian urban artist Salvatore Benintende aka "TVBOY" who represented Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa wearing a protective face-mask and holding a mobile phone reading "Mobile World Virus" in a street of Barcelona on February 18, 2020, a week after the World Mobile Congress was cancelled due to fears in regards of the Coronavirus.

Let´s now move to the west coast of the US in the city of Los Angeles where the street artist Hijack Art has painted a mural of two soldiers fending off the Coronavirus in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of LA. “This particular issue involving the Coronavirus and all the devastation it’s leaving in its wake, was a no-brainer for me,” said the artist. “The fear and call to action of this pandemic have really captured the imagination of many in and outside my city.”

Located at the intersection of West Pico Boulevard at Reeves Street, the two characters in the piece are wearing Hazmat suits, while attempting to fend off the virus with a feather duster, Windex, hand sanitizer and a vacuum bearing a “No Covid-19” symbol. It taps into the dire need for alcohol-based hand sanitizers. “It’s been a mixed bag of careless spring breakers, toilet paper hoarders, conspiracy theorists and hypochondria,” adds Hijack. “I’m being told ‘it feels like we’re in wartime,’ so I also wanted to add that element to the piece.”

In Milan, answering of the COVID-19 pandemic that is gradually touching the entire world, the artist Amadama decided to create some street art and, on a giant white banner, a vivid pink screen popped up and wrote the words in English, Spanish and Italian: “CORONAVIRUS SUCK THIS, CORONAVIRUS CHUPASNOSLA, CORONAVIRUS SUCACELO”.

This guerrilla video titled “CORONAVIRUS SUCKS” showed up in what, before the pandemic, was a neighborhood for nightlife and tourist landmark, the Navigli (conceived by the great Leonardo Da Vinci).

To address the Coronavirus situation, Jules Muck, whose street art name is Muck Rock, painted a mural of Anna Nicole Smith wearing a fear-scrawled face mask. “I’m a little bit in fear of when we’ll get out of this,” said Muck, a California-based artist. “I painted this piece when I was recently in Miami, there was a lot of pandemonium, people buying up all the supplies, it wasn’t a great way to see human beings – there’s preparedness, then there’s selfishness. The fear was causing people to be self-serving.”

In answer to the Covid-19 situation, the street artist Shannon Greenhaus has created a cardboard artwork in the window of her house, which is in a high-traffic street with a lot of pedestrians. The street artist has emblazoned the phrases #StayTheFuckHome and #WearAFuckingMask alongside a sculpture of a 17th-century doctor’s mask. “As I have watched it all unfold here in the US, I am increasingly frustrated with the lack of clear, decisive action being taken by government officials, and the ambivalence of many individuals,” said Greenhaus. “People are not acting with the level of gravity that the Coronavirus requires.”

There are many street artworks dedicated to the Coronavirus around the world at the moment and more keep being created every day. We hope that you liked the ones we gathered in our article and stay tuned for more!