2020 and 2021 were historic years filled with sorrow and darkness. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the loss of millions of human lives worldwide and revealed the gaping holes in the American healthcare system. For many people, it was a period of deep, psychological trauma that had never been acknowledged before and they became despondent to the tragedy that was happening all around them.
In the past year, artist Xiaoze Xie has been developing a new body of work that grapples with the loss, grief, and psychological trauma engendered by the ongoing global pandemic. His new monumental, multi-panel painting, Panorama of Eternal Night (2021), combines media images of the global pandemic with famous works of art history. Immersed in a grisaille-like effect, images of healthcare workers in the ominous white suits we have become familiar with are shown in action fighting against the pandemic: a pair of workers cart a sick patient on oxygen, a group of healthcare workers carry a coffin across a field of white beds on another panel, and another group is hugging each other in solidarity. In the distance are also more bleak scenes of the pandemic and climate change: a melting glacier, a New York City skyline immersed in darkness and the haunting red glow of the Empire State Building needle, and makeshift piles of crematory fires from COVID burials in India. Juxtaposed throughout the visual field are re-configured scenes from Dante's Inferno illustrated by Gustave Doré; a Tang Dynasty mural from the Dunhuang Caves, Disciples of Buddha in Mourning; Giotto's The Lamentation of Christ; and Francisco Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.
2020 and 2021 were historic years filled with sorrow and darkness. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the loss of millions of human lives worldwide and revealed the gaping holes in the American healthcare system. For many people, it was a period of deep, psychological trauma that had never been acknowledged before and they became despondent to the tragedy that was happening all around them.
In the past year, artist Xiaoze Xie has been developing a new body of work that grapples with the loss, grief, and psychological trauma engendered by the ongoing global pandemic. His new monumental, multi-panel painting, Panorama of Eternal Night (2021), combines media images of the global pandemic with famous works of art history. Immersed in a grisaille-like effect, images of healthcare workers in the ominous white suits we have become familiar with are shown in action fighting against the pandemic: a pair of workers cart a sick patient on oxygen, a group of healthcare workers carry a coffin across a field of white beds on another panel, and another group is hugging each other in solidarity. In the distance are also more bleak scenes of the pandemic and climate change: a melting glacier, a New York City skyline immersed in darkness and the haunting red glow of the Empire State Building needle, and makeshift piles of crematory fires from COVID burials in India. Juxtaposed throughout the visual field are re-configured scenes from Dante's Inferno illustrated by Gustave Doré; a Tang Dynasty mural from the Dunhuang Caves, Disciples of Buddha in Mourning; Giotto's The Lamentation of Christ; and Francisco Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.
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