After ravaging the world for the past three years, the COVID-19 virus has induced the birth of the LIVES exhibition. Nipping at the heels of this artistic debut, the cunning and insidious Omicron variant has further exacerbated the severity of the pandemic. Those of us engrossed in seeking methods for human rebirth in the post-Covid imagination have redirected our sights into museums to fix our eyes upon art, an approach that is both luxurious and potentially perilous (the contradictions in these two phrases are so vivid); but to what end? What spectrums of human existence are refracted through the prism of contemporary art? What revelations and assurances are implied by art that warrant our distraction and concern?
The horrors of the bubonic plague injected an impetus for Europe to bid farewell to the Middle Ages and make strides toward Modernity. Smallpox and cholera accompanied the decline of Empires in the Americas that launched the development of European colonies. The outbreak of yellow fever staved off French forces and gave the United States an opportunity to strengthen its forces. Time and again, plagues that catalyzed drastic declines in human populations and triggered a collective panic for survival have brought immediate rapid impact on the normal operation of human societies. These disruptions have triggered rapid ruptures and unexpected turns throughout human history. The pandemic contagion preceding COVID-19 was the Spanish flu outbreak that began in January 1918, which took an estimated 50 million lives before it finally subsided in April 1920. Bookended by two traumatic world wars, that virus devastated the globe, compelling human beings to question the value of civilizations that had once been a source of pride. Under attack by an insidious virus, the fragility of life stood in even starker contrast against the absurdities of utilizing high tech for human mutual destruction through war and violent organizations. In actually, contemporary art, marked by the publication of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, was born precisely of the luxury and peril, afforded by the confusion of derailed senses that called into question the rationality of human self-consciousness under the severe impact of the Great Plague.