TAMPA, FLA.- The USF Contemporary Art Museum, part of the USF Institute for Research in Art in the College of The Arts, launched its first major virtual exhibition, Life During Wartime: Art in the Age of the Coronavirus. It humbly engages a select company of international artists to respond to the overwhelming realities of the crisis that has gripped the planet since March 5, the date the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The exhibition takes full advantage of one of the few outlets artists still have—the Internet. It aims to mobilize sentiment, thought and activity around art and its enduring possibilities: its role as a conceptual catalyst, its ability to trigger ideas, stories, conversations, emotions, feelings and mental states. Separately and together, each artist contribution provides a picture of a planet in crisis, but also images of hope and optimism in the face of a global emergency. The exhibition will continue to evolve with the addition of new artists and materials. Life During Wartime: Art in the Age of Coronavirus is supported in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS INCLUDE:
Marcos Agudelo, Diana Al-Hadid, Atelier Van Lieshout, Alberto Borea, Sebastiaan Bremer, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Seth Cameron, Samantha Casolari, Rebecca Chamberlain, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Jordi Colomer, Patricia Cronin, Godfried Donkor, Dysturb, Inka Essenhigh, Maureen Gallace, Zhao Gang, Rico Gatson, Mark Thomas Gibson, Patrick Hamilton, Ellen Harvey, Yishai Jusidman, Deborah Kass, Basil Kincaid, Glenda León, Matvey Levenstein, Kalup Linzy, Hew Locke, Cristina Lucas, Narsiso Martinez, Eva and Franco Mattes, Richard Mosse, Angel Otero, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Edison Peñafiel, Dagoberto Rodríguez, Anastasia Samoylova, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Guy Richards Smit, Kiki Smith, Bosco Sodi, Tavares Strachan, SUPERFLEX, Sarah Sze, Jorge Tacla, Tony Tasset, Newsha Tavakolian, Janaina Tschäpe, Spencer Tunick, Rodrigo Valenzuela, William Villalongo, Kennedy Yanko, Lisa Yuskavage.
In consideration of the fact that artistic expression has been significantly recontextualized by the current pandemic, Life During Wartime will present artworks made before as well as contributions made during the current period of quarantine. The exhibition will feature artist contributions that are not limited exclusively to finished artworks, but also include interviews, personal reflections, observations, texts, social media posts and even playlists.
THE CURATOR
Christian Viveros-Fauné (Santiago, 1965) has worked as a gallerist, art fair director, art critic and curator since 1994. He was awarded a USF Kennedy Family Visiting Fellowship in 2018, a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Grant for short-form arts writing in 2009, was named Art Critic in Residence at the Bronx Museum in 2011, and has lectured at Yale University, Pratt Institute, and Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Viveros-Fauné is Chief Critic for Artland and writes regularly for ArtReview and Sotheby’s/Art Agency Partners’s in other words. He serves as Curator-at-Large at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum. He has curated numerous museum exhibitions around the world and is also the author of several books. His most recent, Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art, was published by David Zwirner Books in 2018.
