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"Fear, bigotry and misinformation - this reminds me of the 1980s AIDS pandemic"
Edmund White, April 6th 20201
In these works produced after March 2020, after the beginning of the covid19 pandemic, Fábio Carvalho tries to reflect on this new way of living, in seclusion, isolation, when the fear in relation to another human being becomes immense, when the borders are reduced to our homes, our skin, the respiratory mask that promises to separate us from the disease; we are all now vectors of death.
It all started when the artist made by hand two respiratory masks for his own use, with leftover fabrics from previous works. However, the first one was too small for your face, and the next one, uncomfortable for prolonged use. In addition, He has found out that the fabric he used was not suitable for that purpose. He decided not to waste the masks, and to create art reflections, in line with his artistic production even before the pandemic, taking advantage of other materials that the artist already had at home. This, by the way, has been a characteristic of this production, since one cannot go out to buy materials; it is necessary to deal with limitations and precariousness, which turns out to be a reflection of the very condition of life at the moment: precarious and limited.
We are fighting a war against a threat that we cannot see, in Brazil, aggravated by the fight against the lack of resources and misery of a large part of the population, ignorance, religious fanaticism, and the cult of a sick and necrophilic personality, elected by Washington Post the "worst world leader" in tackling the pandemic2. "
"Like all living beings, like this virus that reproduces in us, we want to live" (Eliane Brum, April 20203). So it's necessary to transform anguish, horror, fear, anxiety, into something that at least gives us some minimal sense, that takes us out of paralysis, depression, and with these works the artist found some reason to go on.
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