1. Two Mithila Artists Respond to Modi's COVID‐19 Lockdown in 2020.
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COVID-19 , *STAY-at-home orders , *COVID-19 pandemic , *SOCIAL status , *ONLINE exhibitions - Abstract
Summary: In the spring and summer of 2020, as the COVID‐19 pandemic began to sweep through India, artists from the Mithila region began to paint about the new world in which they lived. Their thoughtful engagement with the changes they faced—changes in behavior, in social life, in nature—is reflected in their many paintings at the Syracuse University Art Museum, which I organized into an online exhibit, "Mithila Art in the Time of Covid‐19." Several painters focused on the All‐India Lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Modi on March 24, 2020. With millions of laborers stranded in India's cities, lacking work, housing, or food, a massive human movement home began. Here I engage with four paintings of the Lockdown and journeys home, two by a Dalit male artist, himself at times a migrant day‐laborer, and the other two by a middle‐class/upper caste educated female artist. Representing social positions at the two ends of the social structure of the Mithila region, they present contrasting views of what the Lockdown meant. Both also focus on what they see as the failure of the Indian government in this time of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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