"I'm learning a lot about Murphy's Law, as my computer crashed a few days ago too," Amandine Urruty tells us in an email that included photographs from her typical day in times of the Covid-19 pandemic, which included a poetic essay reflecting on her current life situation. "This is definitely a complicated period."
Recently, our eyes have been on French graphite artist, highlighting, with much anticipation, her debut solo show which opened with Dorothy Circus Gallery in London on the eve of the trans-European quarantine (read our interview with the artist here). That buildup seemed to drain Urruty significantly, as she fell sick only two days before the opening. Locked down in her hometown of Toulouse, she recently sent us an emotional journal for our Art in Uncertain Times segment.
On Saturday, March 14, my oldest friend called me, "I’m bored, let’s have a drink?"
I was tired, but I had to make that effort for him. A few minutes after his call, I heard that all the bars and restaurants were going to be closed at midnight. For an indefinite period. The French newspaper called that day The Day Before. We drank, we laughed, we even danced. Until 4am.
On Tuesday, March 17, the party was over. My first reaction was a childish, boastful one. Hey guys, I know what self-isolation is! Self-isolation is my life! I’m locked down all day and night-long, filling my sheets with graphite. Self-isolation? A fiddle-faddle.
On Tuesday, March 17, I began to feel very bad. Asthenic. Sleeping all day, feeling feverish. Heart beating fast. It lasted one week.
The future had suddenly disappeared and left me with doubts, fears, and a motionless body. That self-isolation, that eremitical life had no sense anymore. It only had sense as long as the Outside existed, as a possibility, full of promises, joys and even disappointment.
Those Saturday night laughs? Distant memories. We wake up every morning in a new reality. Our new reality. Death is looming over the stage, grinning. With its cape, its scythe. Living in a cartoon. The streets are deserted. 28 days later. 2% of the people are vanishing, we are The Leftovers. Fiction. It sticks to the skin.
Let’s get back to work, they say. But what about the four canceled shows, maybe five, maybe more? I’m currently in my hometown, Toulouse, trying to find out how to move forward through the mist. We are one, and we’re all alone. Bound to feel like Saint Anthony.
While waiting for the Future to reappear, I try to find a way to buy paper and pencils. Times of war. These things are not "essential goods". Oh, really?!
So I work on my next book, with a brilliant essayist. I finish a drawing, scan it, start another one. Eating chocolate cereals, just like when I was 12. Reading. Managing to work without models, I’ll be my own model. Looking at all those bubble wrap rolls I bought - for all these canceled shows. Searching through forgotten boxes and pencil cases for my precious tools. Counting them.
Trying to fill these sluggish days with graphite. Nature hates the vacuum. So do I.
Even my hometown is an empty shell, waiting under a blazing sun.
I’m waiting, too.
Text compiled by Sasha Bogojev
