Finding Artistic Inspiration in the Time of Corona

By: Dara Rashwan
@indecisivetho 

Photo: Aly El Gendy

AUC students and faculty in the Arts department have struggled with staying inspired while being stuck at home due to COVID-19, but some have seized the opportunity to find new ways to grow and develop their work.

“You need to have face to face communication to teach art, it is very difficult to teach design online because art needs human interaction. I need to see how the students perceive the information, see their eyes and facial expressions. What I’m teaching needs traditional techniques and we are losing this,” Associate Professor and Chair of the Arts department Haytham Nawar said.

However, being confined home created more time for artists to reflect on their own work.

“With the time that I slowed down my life rhythm let me rethink the value of my projects and what I want to do with my art in the future,” Nawar said.

People in the creative arts have relied on new sources other than the outdoors to seek inspiration.

“All archival recordings are online, so people [in] the last few months tried to transfer their content to be online as an alternative,” Nawar said.

With the source of inspiration from the outdoor surroundings gone, it has been challenging for artists to be creative.

“Being at home greatly affected my creative inspiration because I felt trapped, mentally and physically. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything different. All my days looked the same. So starting a creative process was always very difficult,” Salma Ahmed, a Graphic Design senior, said.  

Not being able to go to campus has certainly had an impact on artistic work. 

“Before COVID I would always try to get inspired by things around me, so when that got very limited after COVID I found it hard to actually challenge my work creatively,” Ahmed said. 

Things have changed, she added “When you feel locked away for so long with so much social and global pressure around you, it gets hard to find that drive that pushes me through.”

For some, the artistic inspiration remained the same despite being stuck at home.

“We’re preparing students to work online and I have to say that Zoom is providing very interesting tools that makes the class experience communal and I don’t see that it is taking much of our inspiration,” Associate Professor of Practice for Graphic Design Nagla Samir said.

Collaborations between fellow artists have come in handy to keep artists inspired and productive in such testing times.

“In my art practice I’m very active, I get my inspiration and my energy by collaborations and going out and meeting people and experimenting with new endeavors,” Samir said.

Quarantine has also paved a way for newfound creative inspiration and new means of artistic processes. Creators have relied on new sources, such as Pinterest and a range of websites, other than the outdoors, to seek inspiration.

Not only that, but the free time in quarantine has allowed artists to develop their skills. 

“I now trust my human intuition as an artist or an art appreciator and I’m not shying away from loving a certain artwork or the work of an artist or a specific project and wanting to visit that again,” Samir explained.