Quarantine Aesthetics – Reflections on Arts, Visualities and Body Experience in the Era of Covid-19

Abstract

Latin America is still considered one of the hotspots of the Covid-19 pandemic. The media coverage is accompanied by un-seen images of healthy, quarantined, sick and dead bodies circulating globally and re-shaping the Latin American imaginary. Therein, globally perceived images of bodies and the global mapping of ‘infected individuals’ oftentimes contrast with local and individual body experiences. Radical social changes go thus hand in hand with new conceptions of the corporeal as well as with experiences of distancing and proximity being visualized in the images of bodies. Visually transported information on the special threat situation for indigenous communities in Brazil and other regions also evoke the epistemologies of artistic and graphic images of former infectious diseases in the Southern part of the Americas, especially of smallpox in the process of colonizations when the colonial power matrix was also exercised via the control over infections. The paper will focus on Latin America to discuss the entanglements of arts, visualities and body experience in times of Covid-19 and the aesthetics created alongside the pandemic.