The website of the Yunus Emre Institute’s Covidoscope Project, which mirrors the emotional and artistic expressions of the COVID-19 pandemic on a global scale, is now available to visitors with different language options in Turkish, English, Arabic and Spanish.
In early 2020, as the Covid-19 outbreak struck, life across the world changed suddenly and dramatically. In response, individuals began to create and share new works that articulated their own experiences and those they witnessed around them.
This output, collectively formed at a pivotal and meaningful moment, and which as a whole, forms an emotive diary of life during a pandemic, comes together in the “covidoscope” project. It assembles a selection of the outpourings of feeling spanning from the very first days of the outbreak. Inspired by the multifarious, shifting, harmonious reflections of vivid colours seen through a kaleidoscope, our aim is to create a global pandemic memory bank which includes both commonalities, and subjective expressions.
Yunus Emre Institute made the following statement in regards to the Covidoscope project:
“Whether in photographs, animations, paintings or cartoons, they captured intense and often conflicting emotions – from uncertainty to hope, from vigilance to calm, and from fear and anger to kindness and solidarity. With the contributions of a diverse research and consulting team this collection aims to include all aesthetic production forms reflecting the period. This collection includes works from almost 40 countries. Including prominent artists and institutions from England such as the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; award winning cartoonist in the Evening Standard, Christian Adams and Henry Tozer with his unique melodies for the quarantine.
Author of the Book of Human Emotions, Dr. Tiffany Watt Smith; historian and documentarist Saadet Özen; psychiatrist and writer Prof. Dr. Kemal Sayar are among the consultants of the digital memory project, which underlines the solidarity formed between people grappling with the same unanticipated ordeals, and the integrating quality of emotional experiences.
Available on a digital platform at www.covidoscope.org, you can explore the collection through different viewpoints. Whether it is through the world map or through themes and emotions, it is possible to view this culturally significant gallery through your own unique perspective. The users are enabled to trace the works and cultural richness on world maps depicting emotions and themes.
Clues about the compilation of works have already started to appear on covidoscope’s social media accounts, and its website is now ready for perusal at www.covidoscope.org in multiple languages. The archive formed is shared on the website and has Arabic and Spanish language options as well as English and Turkish options.
This is an ongoing project, created during a pivotal moment in the world’s history, and will form an emotive diary of life during a pandemic.
The ®covidoscope project which underlines the solidarity formed between people grappling with the same unanticipated ordeals by integrating their emotional experiences is developed by Yunus Emre Institute, Turkey’s worldwide cultural organisation.”
