Virus, Art and Faith: How to Respond to the Challenges Posed by Covid-19

Abstract

Five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the alarm it caused seems to have subsided. There is little talk of it, and yet the foreboding of a new, even more deadly catastrophe remains. One wonders whether we have learnt anything from those moments that highlighted our precariousness and vulnerability despite the developments made in science and technology, and whether we have made good use of our experience. At the end of the pandemic, the question arose as to whether art, and painting in particular, continued to represent an open window on the visible and the invisible, just as the question in the field of faith arose as to whether “normality was what we should hope for, or whether it was actually normality that was the cause of the problems we are currently experiencing”. Our experience of faith can provide us with a “new breath”, a new perspective on the world, and help us to look ahead with realism and well-founded hope.