COVID Uncovered

COVID Uncovered is a collaborative online drawing project developed in Italy during the spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. The initiative was led by illustrator Emiliano Ponzi, together with the Milan-based creative space Spazio Fuori Luogo and the independent magazine OPEN. When in-person life drawing sessions had to be cancelled due to the national stay-at-home order (#iorestoacasa), the organizers reimagined figure drawing in a remote format. They invited around twenty artists to join a live videoconference session featuring two nude models wearing only various forms of protective face coverings, aiming to interpret classic life drawing during the time of coronavirus. These masks ranged from simple scarves that some elderly people wore in the days of the pandemic, to surgical masks indicated by the Minister of Health, and to the exaggeration of Russian gas masks.

Historically, life drawing has been an exercise in observing the unadorned human form. Here, it became a commentary on the way the pandemic reshaped our relationship to the body. The masks, in this context, do not act as accessories and more as symbols of collective anxiety, precaution, and politicized debate. The nudity of the human body also contrasted sharply with the utilitarian presence of the masks, which underscores the surreal reality of daily life under COVID-19. The artists, participating safely from their homes, utilize art to consider the lockdown not just in its subject matter, but also through the changing conditions of artistic production. Instead of gathering in studios, artists worked via webcam; the final drawings are thus shaped by the technological interference and emotional distance of the pandemic. The finished works were auctioned online, with proceeds donated to the Italian Red Cross. This act of fundraising turned the private, introspective process of drawing into a gesture of public care and solidarity. By combining art, technology, and mutual aid, COVID Uncovered became a direct and specific artistic response to the realities of pandemic life: physical isolation, reliance on digital connection, and heightened awareness of bodily risk.