Caio de Figueiro: Strange Times Online Exhibition
Caio de Fiquerio, Photograph
My Quarantine Experience:
I am fortunate during these times of quarantine to be safe and healthy at home. I have escaped through long stretches of sitting around watching TV. The times and memories of doing this seem to overflow and overlap. An hour goes by in the blink of an eye. Where did my time go? What did I do? It is disorienting without a busy schedule or the activities of my constant usual everyday life. I feel like it is easy for us to lose track of what we need to do and drift from activity to activity. Time passes and nothing happens. Time passes and nothing happens. The uneventfulness is a good thing in the time of keeping everyone safe during a pandemic. I try to break the spell of the digital time loop by taking a closer look at my life and expressing myself through my camera.
Artist Statement About Artwork:
During this time of COVID-19, I have had a lot more time and freedom in some ways and yet feel trapped and stuck in time as well. Time feels more obvious and strange now that I’m off my busy-busy routine. It’s going at this great uneven beat–sometimes too fast (a blink of an eye and hours have passed in my pajamas in front of a screen) and sometimes too slow (a blink of an eye seems heavy and hard as I think about a past life where you could hug a grandparent without fear). Regardless of how we feel, time and the pandemic still beat on. Tick. Tick. Tick. There is this kind of stuckness in a loop of never-ending days that feel like one giant day of “pandemicness.” Instead of going to school and work, I am in my home bubble of safety. I am trying to unplug and find creative outlets. I am digging into the positive things I can do like photography, digital art, and gardening. Instead of feeling trapped, I try to see it as a great time
for slowing down, learning new things, and creating the things that we never had the time tomake and do. I’ve been taking control of my view of the world through the camera settings to create interesting moments and photos. Using different editing software to see how I can manipulate and make a thoughtful change in my world–even if it is just an image. It’s me taking control of my time and power in a time of such great uncertainty about what our future will hold. For every tick, tick, tick. Instead try…Click. Click. Click.
Artist Statement:
Making art is such an act of freedom–there are no rules, no guidelines, no good or bad. There is simply just what you feel and want the art to be. To me, it’s a creative process with yourself, your world and the medium you are working with. This also applies in some ways to our current situation of quarantining ourselves at home where there are no rules, no guidelines, no good or bad to how you do your new way of days. I have always loved art, but not had the time to devote to it. The silver lining of the pandemic is that although I feel trapped by time, I now have time to explore myself through art.
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