Ça va bien aller
American Illustration 40 (Selected for publication)
This astronaut here is really my way of expressing our collective experiences since March 2020, my own experience of isolation (that I know many can relate to) and the onslaught of things we've been facing globally.
As a kid, sci fi Books and movies were the way we put aside conflict and came together as a family. To me, the year 2020 seemed to be the first year we would really know we're living in the future. So here we are, and in ways, it's true. Though our future exists less in the physical space. We can all agree, this is no full on cyberpunk dystopia or unified flying city.
That's the beauty of Sci Fi though, it's a genre that simultaneously conveys hope and caution. Hopeful in the very fact that we still exist as a species 100 years from now, and often cautionary in how our current behaviours are enhanced or reversed to the extreme.
So that's where this little personification came from. I had been thinking about images of hope in a global crisis. Specifically "Ça va bien aller 🌈" here in Québec. As an artist, I am the first to believe in the positive power of symbols, but I just had a feeling that this symbol had a limit. I liked it's ability to tame our fear, especially for children, when the best course of action was inaction. But, as things progressed, and vigilance began to stagger, it began to take on an air of complacency to me. This was amplified as things inevitably boiled over against injustice and through the BLM movement, where the practice of inaction stood in contrast to COVID 19 measures. Blindness and bandaids became more apparent to me as I absorbed information and participated in conversations. So 2020 feels like floating helpless in a field of hard 💩. But like this astronaut, it's likely there are powers that have pushed us towards it for their own interests.
No real answers here. Just thoughts, and obviously a large percentage of fun with cool spacey Chris Foss tribute aesthetics.
