Musah Yussif: Experiencing COVID-19 Through Art

"The idea of this work came during the lockdown. It was influenced by a movie that I had watched. Titled ‘The Room’, it was about a young lady who was trapped in a room by a kidnapper."

"My work relates to the situation during the lockdown where we were not allowed to go out or be in the midst of a group of people for our own betterment."

"It [the series of drawings] contradicts the influence from the movie that I watched where the woman didn’t have any choice when she was kidnapped. We had a choice but because of the situation of the pandemic we were supposed to stay home."

"That period also gave us the chance to reflect on our lives. Even though it was a problematic period for all humans, in a way we were all facing similar problems where we must confine ourselves for our own safety."

"The whole work is about me posing in different states when I had nothing to do other than to do the usual things like to sleep, read a book, or browse the web. It became a routine. Even though it was boring, it gave us the opportunity to reflect on ourselves, moving us away from the usual daily active activities."

"Usually, in my works I take out the setting and replace it with patterns but I excluded that and included the actual space that I existed in. That's the room and you could see the actual state of my room and the things I normally did. Compared to my other works which are more fictional, the images in these works are almost realistic. Realistic in the sense that, I am portraying the current state in which I exist in."

"In a way, I also try to capture things people could relate with in this period."

"The images also have this silent state where you can see the relationship between the subject, the setting and activities the subject engages in. I think it also opens up different interpretations. It is a self-portrait though. But it reflects the things that are going on in real life."