Quarantine Stories

In april 2020, in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, I gathered five international artists, who I had never met before, to create a rug together on the theme quarantine. This rug is a joined composition of stories, interweaving the experiences of artists based in different epicentres of the Corona pandemic. 

The aim was to inspire artists, who were all separated from their usual contexts and isolated at home during quarantine, to reach across national borders and create work on our individual experiences of this unique situation.

The one-of-a-kind rug is a still image of this period in time, serving as testament to what the pandemic and quarantine have meant to artists of the far corners of the world.

Read their stories here.

Participating artists: Vizie (New York, USA), Anna Forsberg (Stockholm, Sweden), Ana Cano Brookbank (Madrid, Spain), Zhou Kuang (Wuhan, China), Mattia Turco (Milano, Italy), Estefania Leigthon (Santiago, Chile) 

Artist introductions in the film below.

The rug and 10 smaller rugs depicting each individual artist’s patterns, was exhibited at Galleri Sebastian Schildt from January 30 – February 20 2021. The exhibition was reviewed by Lotta Jonson in Dagens Nyheter 3/2 2021.

Just like my Makeda rugs, this rug has been produced by hand in Kathmandu, Nepal. The country was already struggling with poverty before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the economy has been badly hit by e.g. the cancellation of tourist seasons, job terminations, widespread income disruptions and closed schools. These factors have had a detrimental effect on the living conditions of rug workers, as well as the Nepalese population in general. Thus, the “Quarantine Stories” artists decided to donate the proceeds from the sale of the rugs to Hamro Ghar – a school and transit home for children in Kathmandu, Nepal, run by the organisation GoodWeave.
(Photo credit: The Studio_M – thestudiom.com)