2020’s latest global symbol? A stenciled nurse in a face mask.

Street art culture often spreads in reaction to events and social culture, leaving its mark on the streets for passing eyes to inhale. Absorbing the street art of a city helps peek into what its undercurrents are expressing, from issues to aesthetics. As makers of this ongoing and regenerative artistic process, street artists are capable of swift and flexible responses to new information, ideas, events… Along this surreal stretch of events, from LA to Mumbai, Dakar to England, these artists are mobilizing as interpreters of the new abnormal, on their own or as part of awareness campaigns.

Corie Mattie, Los Angeles / © Corie Mattie

“Cancel plans not Humanity” reads a recent mural of Los Angeles based Corie Mattie. Another one of her walls introduces “The Hope Dealer”, an ominously bright figure dealing love to the occasional passer-by in LA — and to anyone who purchases the $5 print: “Now you’re a hope dealer too.”

Many street artists have harnessed the power of their urban canvas to support relief and awareness efforts, call for social unity, but also condemn the leaders who were slower in their own call to action.

But what type of impact can street art have when the streets are technically off limits? And how exactly are these urban narrators telling and reflecting stories, as the whole world has the same conversation?

© JR — ‘Contained’

Encouraging Empathy

Illustrating the collective experience can help nurture compassion and a sense of personal responsibility. These are vital organs for our ability to coordinate global actions, in a time where few can disrupt the many. By reminding that we are all going through the same thing on public surfaces, street art can humanizes the ‘others’ who could be harmed if we don’t respect the isolation.

© Mohammed Abed, Gaza — “By fighting the epidemic, we protect human beings and preserve the Earth”

Through these visual conversations, artists can develop a deep connectivity to urban spaces and issues faced by people. As these spaces play a significant role in our shared crisis experience, muralists spring up as natural, harmonizing narrators.

Radikl Bomb Shot, Dakar — © Zohra Bensemra / REUTERS

Spray Can Awareness

Some artists have been taking advantage of the high visibility of murals to directly converse with people about life-saving behavior changes.

In Dakar, some gatherings continued despite the declared state of emergency. To counter this, the educational social activist crew Radikl Bomb Shot took to their spray cans. With color pops of clear visuals and direct instructions, they illustrated proper hygiene practices and emergency numbers on walls, their characters adorned with beautiful fabrics.

Radikl Bomb Shot, Dakar — © Alaattin Doğru

Splashing the themes of social distancing, washing hands and staying home onto public walls has the effect of making it all more real, perhaps realer than alarmed words of people in suits on TV. In India, calls to sneeze in your elbow in order to ‘catch it bin it kill it’ appeared while the government was still assuring that no local transmission of the virus was taking place.

Lionel Stanhop — © Matt Dunham/AP

In places where the state’s painfully slow reaction risked the lives of many, street artists helped bring the virus to the public spheres’ reality before country leaders did.

© Crkshnk, New York

© Airá Ocrespo, Rio de Janeiro — Appeared on the same day as Bolsonaro’s March 18 press conference

© Amanda Newman Art, Melbourne — “This is Ai Fen. She was one of the first badass doctors to raise the alarm about the virus. The hospital and government silenced her. A global pandemic ensued. What would be different if her voice had been heard?”

© Lushsux, Melbourne — “Nothing to see, carry on”

Robin Bell, Washington D.C.— © Bell Visuals

In Portugal, the authorities themselves hired street artists to help spread the message. After covering Lisbon in “Stay Home” wheatpastes, Salvador Colaco was commissioned last week by the mayor of Cascais and a local youth organization to continue his one-man awareness campaign. Since then, he’s put up over 100 more prints throughout the city, his hoodie-glove street art uniform eerily mirroring the healthcare workers he pastes.

© Salvador Colaco , Cascais — “Stay Home”

Support and Celebration

As healthcare workers at the frontline of the crisis need and deserve unconditional support from us, our governments and our systems, the masked nurse has become the rallying emblem to celebrate and encourage.

© Iamfake, Amsterdam — “Super Nurse is a tribute to all healthcare professionals around the world. To encourage them in these challenging times, to lift their spirits and send them love and appreciation, when so much is expected of them and so many people depend on their work”

© Polar Bear for Project SAATO — Live painted and auctioned to support Paris hospitals

© Tomo7701 — “Nurses. Heroes of the Pandemic. At the front lines. We salute you.”

In the post-crisis world, physical and mental health ramifications loom for healthcare workers. Their faces, masked for battle, have been massively reinterpreted all over the world in shows of public support.

© Jillyballistic, New York — “First Responders”

© Xamoosh, Tehran — “Don’t be afraid”

Warsaw — © Wojtek Radwanski/AFP

Positive propaganda

With our increased connectivity comes the opportunity to harness collective action. Amplifier Art, a grassroots design lab and “art machine for social change”, has launched a vivid campaign, calling on visual artists to create posters promoting health and safety to raise large-scale awareness and unity.

Jeni Jenkins from Renegade Babe Studio. Available at amplifier.org — “There has never been a global moment where the entire human species has come together in solidarity to resist a common cause.”

Amplifier Art’s campaign aims to “help flatten the curve through education” and “help promote mental health, well-being, and social change work during these stressful times.” The 60 selected artists are offered $1000 in cash prizes, while their creations are uploaded as high-resolution free downloads.

© Stattheartist — “Inspired by all of the underrepresented women of color working the front lines to save us from this global pandemic”

Every day, a new one of these creations is projected onto the NYU Langone Hospital. Amplifier Art has announced the expansion of projections to other surfaces around the States.

© Shepard Fairey — “With all of the stresses coronavirus puts on healthcare workers, public servants, and the public psyche in mind, I created this art piece, “Angel of Hope and Strength.” This piece was created to celebrate the courage of healthcare workers specifically, and generally symbolize the spirit of hope, strength, compassion, and resilience that we can all find in ourselves and share collectively. It’s a tough time even for tough people, but we will all fare better if we summon the better angels of our nature.”

Murals for Hope

Vancouver Mural Fest is beautifying the city’s closed businesses with illustrations of resilience. The “Murals for Hope” campaign will color up the plywood boarding up storefronts, as a nod to a more dynamic future for these spaces. Commissioned by the city and specific districts, the project reflects what a peaceful state and street art relationship can look like.

© David Austin, Vancouver

© Amy Danning Sun, Vancouver / “My first public mural came to an end after 7 days of hard work. Within these days, I didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to eat. All I wanted was to go there and paint again. It has reignited my long dormant passion for creating art.”

A similar but more permanent initiative is underway in Toronto, where Arts & Culture agency Kadence World is partnering with affected local businesses to make wall space for “community positive murals throughout downtown”.

© Emily May Rose & Haenahhh, Toronto — “Home Sweet Home: We hope they make you think of better days to come. Please enjoy while practicing safe physical distancing… more on the way!”

Power to the Prints

The many incredible fund-raising art movements make it possible to support people in need, whether in affected communities or the healthcare sector, and spruce up your life with some art in exchange. France’s SAATO Gallery project has been auctioning incredible daily art prints, from watercolors to acrylic to spray-paint to collages, with proceeds going to various hospitals throughout France.

© Graffmatt for SAATO Gallery — “Degradation”

Other artists are independently offering art as rewards for donations. LA-based Kai raised $80 375 in 24 hours to purchase masks for health care professionals.

© Kai — “Not all heroes wear capes”

Meanwhile, Kobra’s trademark opaque color grids show the faces of all religions side by side, united by the same prayer. Through his Art of Helping project, the Brazilian artist is fund-raising for food and sanitary kits for refugees, offering his creation in return.

© Kobra, São Paulo — “Shall we lower the impact of the new coronavirus on the lives of the neediest people?”

Illustrating collective grief

“This is for everyone that we have lost and sadly, those we will loose in the days ahead. It is a depiction of the angel of resurrection, a statue from the Italian sculptor Giulio Monteverde to commemorate deceased members of the patron’s family. I painted it from the ground with a roller extension pole, stopping several times to lay low when the police were called. It is such a small risk when I think about the people on the frontlines in the hospitals, whose bravery I cannot even fathom. From Italy to here to everywhere in the world, we hope for mercy.” — Distoart

© Distoart, Jersey City

© Reederone, “Old Friend” — “Inspired by our new reality”

South Broadway Street Art, Denver

Despite the challenges facing it, the street art community is stepping up into its social commentary role, narrating a new international wave of connection and confined innovation.

By layering physical and virtual walls with calls for solidarity, awareness, and political accountability, street artists are revitalizing necessary conversations with brush strokes, color, and visual poetry. They have taken on an essential global role in diffusing information, hope and creative bonds — a resilient and relevant turn of events, for a movement born on the margins.