"Denmark is (very) slowly opening up again," Huskmitnavn tells us from the Danish capital of Copenhagen as we continue to check with our friends around the globe. "The youngest kids are back in school and kindergarten, the older ones are still being homeschooled. The hairdressers just reopened. People don't look like Chewbacca any more."
After weeks of conversations with artists through our Art in Uncertain Times series, it is almost surreal to hear the words suggesting some sort of a light at the end of the tunnel. But it took time for Huskmitnavn and his country to get there. "Life has been a mess since mid-March," he tells us without trying to sugarcoat the situation. "Drawing is the only thing that still feels normal to me. Copenhagen is empty and silent. No tourists, no airplanes in the sky. Only a few people going back and forth to work. When they are not at work they go for walks. It seems like the only outdoor thing to do right now."
Exceptionally skilled at transforming the snapshots of reality into witty visual anecdotes, Huskmitnavn has been obsessively prolific through this crisis. "I was working from home for the first couple of weeks, and now I go to the studio most days," he tells us about how things changed. "I released a new print, worked on my webshop, and produced some drawings about our new life in the age of corona. It's like keeping a diary." During this period, he conceived a series of creative worksheets consisting of drawings where kids could finish or fill in the scenario, as minimal or detailed as imagined. "They were available for download from my website and thousands of people from all over the world downloaded drawings and sent me their finished versions every day. It was nice to feel like I could give people something to do every day—and to get drawings back made me feel how much we're all in this together."
Such a sense of togetherness is what really carries us through these times, as we look forward to a future that resembles our past. "I just installed a big new solo show at Eighteen Gallery, opening in mid-May," Huskmitavn enthuses about what's coming up, and we're just as excited to see those new works. "Life goes on while the world is standing still," he concludes as we patiently wait for our to see how it all unfolds.
Text compiled by Sasha Bogojev
