The uncertainty of an artist in the Covid era

We are all beginning to see the impact of Covid on our jobs.

As an artist (and freelancer too), I’m used to living a life full of uncertainties, changes and false hopes. As artists and freelancers, we don’t always know what our futures will be like, even though we know for sure that certain projects will come to fruition.
But Covid has changed everything, it has destabilised us even more.
It has brought us even more anxiety and doubts.

Every Monday I take a few hours to look at the new open calls.
And over the past few weeks, I have noticed some changes.
The first is the incredible number of open calls for online exhibitions.
I may change my mind in the future, but for the moment I’m not interested in online exhibitions. It will never replace the pleasure of physically seeing works in detail. Also, for some of these open calls you have to pay a registration fee, isn’t that a shame?
I also think that, as artists, we are looking for visibility and feedback. I like to be able to talk to people who come to my exhibitions, to hear how they perceive my work, to see if it resonates (or not) with them… and I don’t think that online exhibitions can offer that. People can of course contact us after, but the exchanges will be quite different.

Art is based on social interactions, and if these take different forms, if they can no longer exist, then artists find themselves in anxious situations. Even if our work depends primarily on our own gaze, it also depends on the gaze of others. This is how we move forward.
I’m certainly asking too much at the moment and I understand very well the reasons for making online exhibitions, especially the one to continue to promote art and artists as long as we can’t do physical exhibitions again without risk.
But for now… I‘d rather wait, send submissions for physical exhibitions and hope that everything will soon be back to normal.

The second change concerns the themes of many open calls.
I’ve realised over the last few years that the themes I work on are not particularly in demand. They are not the most recurrent themes.
A few years ago I saw a lot of open calls on the migrant crisis, then more recently it was the turn of global warming and now… I see a lot of open calls on the themes of “isolation during lockdowns”, “living in the covid era”, “waking up in a new world” etc., etc.
I understand that these open calls exist: this crisis has inspired many of us and art should not ignore what has just happened, just as it should not ignore the other crises I mentioned above, but on the other hand, it should not be limited to them either.
There are other issues that need to be addressed.

I’m currently exhibiting one of my photographs at the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum (as part of the “False Memory” exhibition). Due to the situation, this exhibition has been postponed for several months (it started in August instead of March), I was also supposed to exhibit at a contemporary art fair in Lille (France) last March but this exhibition has been postponed to next year.
I’m lucky because so far, it’s only projects that have been postponed and not cancelled.
But I still have this fear in the back of my mind.
Indeed, now when I send submissions, part of me always thinks “even if I’m selected, will the exhibition take place?”. One of my series has just been selected for a screening and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will happen.
For non-artists, this may seem futile. But an exhibition, a screening, when you’re an artist, it is crucial in your career. It means knowing that the work you have been working on for a long time will be shown. And that means gaining visibility, feedback and sometimes money.

With the financial crisis caused by covid, the art sector has lost a lot of money and there is a risk that exhibitions will become increasingly rarer. It’s, therefore, necessary to consider now that there will be even more competition than before.
Moreover, one can easily think that with such a big crisis, investing in artists and buying their works will probably be even more difficult…
Also, I know that as a freelance photographer, I might get fewer commissions than before, especially portrait commissions. As many people have lost money, jobs and priorities have probably changed unfortunately.
These are the first uncertainties we face as artists.

In this article, I explained how the lockdown had helped me to continue my series. It had put me in a state comparable to that which one can feel during an artist’s residency: by being cut off from the world, I was able to refocus on my work. I have to admit that the end of the lockdown was a bit disturbing because I had the impression that having “regained freedom” had a negative impact on my creativity.
In fact, I was running out of ideas. Fortunately, in the last few weeks, the ideas have come back but it has been really weird and disturbing to experience this change.

I don’t really know how to conclude this article as it seems to me that there may be more uncertainties in the months to come. Usually, I like to end on a positive note and I would like to do so in this article.
But the truth is that, like everyone else, I don’t know what lies ahead.
So we have to be patient, which is not an ideal thing when you’re an artist.
But patience is also a synonym for something temporary, don’t forget that.