COVID & OBEY, 2020
diptych, acrylic paint on canvas, 70x70 cm
COVID & OBEY, 2020
Diptych, acrylic on canvas, 70 × 70 cm
COVID & OBEY draws on the visual legacy of Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE image. Originally created as a MoMA-commissioned Christmas card in 1965, Indiana’s design has been repeatedly reinterpreted by artists addressing urgent social issues.
In 1987, the collective General Idea appropriated LOVE into the now-famous AIDS logo, reframing Indiana’s typographic simplicity as a stark commentary on the AIDS crisis. Shortly afterward, the activist group Gran Furytransformed the motif again—this time into RIOT—to provoke public action against governmental inaction on AIDS.
My work COVID & OBEY responds directly to Gran Fury’s RIOT. Whereas Gran Fury sought to incite resistance, the context of 2020 was defined by the opposite demand: collective compliance. During the global COVID-19 lockdown, we were asked to stay home, maintain social distance, and follow strict regulations—we were asked to OBEY.
During the lockdown, I produced postcards featuring my COVID painting and mailed them to family and friends. I later offered the design to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and König Galerie in Berlin, though I received no reply.
COVID & OBEY continues the tradition of typographic appropriation as social commentary, adapting a historic visual language to the atmosphere of control, caution, and collective responsibility that shaped life in 2020.
#stay the fuck at home, 2020
Stay the fuck at home I, 2020, wall light, mdf letters, 20x26 cm
Stay the fuck at home II, 2020, embroidery on disposable plate, 20x20 cm
The phrase “Stay the fuck at home” emerged as a social-media hashtag during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, circulating across Facebook and Instagram as users urged one another to follow the newly imposed restrictions. The message often took on an unintentionally grotesque or ironic tone, especially when people combined the hashtag with posts depicting gatherings, celebrations, or other social events. Stay the Fuck at Home I & II explore this tension between public moralising and individual behaviour. By translating a digital, crowd-driven slogan into physical objects, the works reflect the absurdity, anxiety, and contradictions of early pandemic communication and behaviour.