The Great War, 1964

The Getty Museum has issued a challenge on its Twitter page to encourage people to be creative during quarantine.

While museums remain closed to the public and people worldwide are staying home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, they are having to find creative ways to maintain their sanity (and have fun). This has led to the latest international internet craze: recreating works of art with household items. The Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, and the Hermitage Museum challenged their followers to recreate famous works from their collections. The challenge was inspired by @tussenkunstenquarantaine, an Instagram account from Amsterdam. This account means "between art and quarantine" in Dutch. I joined the craze by sharing and interpreting Rene Magritte's "The Great War." My work received 23.1B likes on the @tussenkunst&quarantaine Instagram account, ranking among the top picks. It was displayed on the giant screen of Standardvision in Los Angeles. My work was published in L’ADN magazine with a short interview.

I was inspired by Magritte for this project. I love creating my own reality in a surrealist style. I've always been fascinated by Rene Magritte's work. I was also inspired by these artists in my school projects. I used the imagery of artists, which they paint onto their canvases, as a reference, and I interpreted the painting using materials I had at home, including the essential accessories of gloves and masks brought on by the pandemic, giving me the opportunity to reference the present day. Reinterpreting the painting made me feel like a part of the painting. It felt as if the artist had painted my painting under current conditions. This was a beautiful inspiration.