Disease, Social Memory and Resilience: A Competition for Artistic Research Expertise

Cause The COVID-19 crisis has had an enormous impact on our society for a year. But how will we look back on this difficult period? How do we reflect on the many victims who suffered from it? virus has claimed? Last summer, Utrecht University, in collaboration with the Centraal Museum and ZonMw, issued an open call for artistic research into a possible way on which the COVID-19 crisis can be commemorated. Two questions were central: How is illness experienced, documented and remembered by society and what is the role of art, artists and memory culture in such moments of crisis? The closing date of the open call was September 30, 2020. From the 23 entries, Rosa Everts, Sanne Kabalt and Bart Lunenburg selected as winners. The three winners each received 5,000 euros for their winning proposal. Artistic research into memory Rosa Everts' work Pandemic 2020 is a visual documentation of the pandemic. Everts shows detailed drawings of people who, despite their different appearances, all have one thing in common: wearing a face mask. Her work addresses human fragility and a possible universal experience of the pandemic. With the proposal for the art installation De Hoest, Sanne Kabalt visualizes the stories of corona patients. By showing the cough, Kabalt connects the personal experiences and impact of the virus with the public health debate. The cough is the focus here, because this is a symptom that is inevitably and sometimes wrongly linked to the virus. Her proposal focuses on the consequences and impact of the coronavirus on former corona patients. In his proposal, Bart Lunenburg examines the confinement and uncertainty of buildings. His proposal builds on an earlier work of his: Room with Windows. Lunenburg connects the history and memory of diseases to architecture. His work provides a new perspective on the universal sense of confinement we are currently experiencing during the pandemic. The healthy city Utrecht University (Department of Modern and Contemporary Art History/Department of Economic and Social History) initiated this competition. For the Centraal Museum, the competition is part of the preparation for the exhibition The Healthy City, which will open in June 2022. Utrecht University and the Centraal Museum are strengthening their collaboration in the field of (art) historical expertise and public outreach. The winners have been selected by Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Prof. Dr. Maarten Prak and Drs. René de Kam in consultation with the jury members Prof. Dr. Ann Rigney, Dr. Surekha Davies and Laurie Cluitmans MA.