In the early days of the COVD-19 pandemic, we re-introduced Creative Time Comics as a digital platform to forefront artist’s responses to the global shifts – be they mental, political, health, or economic – happening around us. As we shared the comics on our social media platform, we realized that they are an incredible and practical device to make sense and reflect on the ever-changing world, beyond the pandemic. We are pleased to continue sharing Creative Time Comics as periodically as a means for communicating complex ideas about society and honoring the medium’s long history of expressing the zeitgeist in times of war, distress, and upheaval.
 
Creative Time Comics also affirms the vital importance of artists’ voices in shaping contemporary discourse, while exploring the digital realm as an expansive and dynamic public space. The resulting works are released on Creative Time’s Instagram account and featured on our website and other social media platforms.
 
Creative Time Comics 2020 references our long history of interpreting digital platforms as forms of public space, and calling on artists to provide critical perspectives on current events. From the first iteration of Creative Time Comics in 2010, to our global initiative Creative Time Reports, we have long championed work that can circulate widely without physical proximity, and that transforms individual viewership into collective experience.
 

THE COMICS

 

 

CHITRA GANESH

Anima Mundi

April 17, 2020

 

 

 
Ganesh’s drawing-based practice brings to light narrative representations of femininity, sexuality, and power typically absent from canons of literature and art. Her wall installations, comics, charcoal drawings, and mixed media works on paper often expand upon historical and mythic texts as both inspiration and a point of departure to complicate received ideas of iconic female forms. Her vocabulary draws from surrealism, expressionism, Hindu and Buddhist iconography, and South-Asian pictorial forms, which she connects with contemporary visual languages of mass media, including comics, science fiction, and illustration. Her upcoming projects include the 2020–21 Queer Power Facade Commssion at the Leslie-Lohman Museum. Ganesh lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

 

CARLOS AMORALES

Offline Dark Age

April 24, 2020

 

 

 
Amorales’ practice encompasses animation, drawing, installation, video, and performance; he also collaborates with professional animators, composers, designers, musicians—and even wrestlers. Having grown up with the influence of both Mexican and European cultures, Amorales frequently explores the commonalities and disparities between the two by juxtaposing their distinctive vocabularies. His work is also deeply personal and reflective of emotional introversion; it journeys into a dark world of fantasy, blurring the line between the real and the imagined. Amorales lives and works in Mexico City.
 

 

PABLO HELGUERA

The Covid Prince

May 15, 2020

 

 
Pablo Helguera is a Mexican artist based in Brooklyn working with projects that range from drawing to socially engaged art. He has received the Guggenheim and Creative Capital Fellowships as well as the First International Award of Participatory Art of the Emilia Romagna region (Bologna). He is the author of several books including The Parable Conference (2014) and Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011).
 

 

FAIZA BUTT

The Necessity of Survival

May 22, 2020

 

 
Faiza Butt was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1973. She received her BA from the National College of Arts in 1993, with honours, and was awarded the Berger Gold Medal for outstanding student of the year. Butt’s elaborate drawings are obsessively crafted with passion and rigour, and create surfaces that hover between photography and embroidery. Born into a family of five sisters, gender related themes are close to her heart. She holds a master’s degree in painting with a distinction award from the Slade School of Fine Art, and a teaching certificate from the Institute of Education. Her work can also be found in private and public collections, including the British Museum, around the world.

 

KAMBUI OLUJIMI

Kilter

June 12, 2020

 

 
Kambui Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Columbia University and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work challenges established modes of thinking that commonly function as “inevitabilities”. This pursuit takes shape through interdisciplinary bodies of work spanning sculpture, installation, photography, writing, video and performance. His works have premiered nationally at The Sundance Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, and Mass MoCA. Internationally his work has been featured Museo Nacional Reina Sofia in Madrid; Kiasma Museum in Finland and Para Site in Hong Kong among others.
 

 

VICTORIA LOMASKO

Life Long Race

June 28, 2020

 

 

VICTORIA LOMASKO

The Russian Constitution was changed

July 17, 2020

 
Describing her work as accurate, rather than political, Victoria Lomasko’s practice explores contemporary Russian society, especially the inner workings of the country’s diverse subcultures, such as Russian Orthodox believers, LGBT activists, migrant workers, sex workers, prisoners, and so on. Victoria Lomasko’s most recent book Other Russias (n+1 and Penguin, 2017), is a collection of ‘graphic reportages,’ a self-described style of art making and record keeping. In the past few years, mural making has become a central facet of her practice.
 

 

ALEXANDRO SEGADE

THE CONTEXT: ENCARCERON

July 24, 2020

 

 
Alexandro Segade is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects span video, performance, writing, drawing, and comics. Often collaborating with Malik Gaines, Segade uses genre and theatricality to construct group identities in collectives such as My Barbarian, A.R.M. and Courtesy the Artists. Segade’s graphic novel, The Context, was published by Primary Information in May 2020. He is assistant professor of art at Cornell University.
 
 

 

PAULO VICTOR DIAS

Portuguese is a very interesting language

August 10, 2020

 

 
Paulo Victor Dias is a Paraense artist from northern Brazil, Amazon who lives in Rio de Janeiro. Through his work, he researches the structuring of images as territory and explores the possible erasures within this process, creating graphic records of the colonial violations that divide the Amazon and the southeast of Brazil. He received his master in Social Sciences at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and studied at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts in the Training program and Deformation.
 

 

HOCK E AYE VI EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS

Welcome/Invade

November 26, 2020

 

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds is an artist and an advocate for indigenous communities worldwide. His work includes multidisciplinary forms of public art messages, large-scale drawings, Neuf Series acrylic paintings, prints, works in glass, and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture. While representing Indigenous communities, his art focuses first on social justice, and on the personal freedom to live within the tribal circle as an expressive individual.
 

 

PAOLA PIVI & VALENTINO MENGHI

Art and Critique in the Time of Covid

December 18, 2020

 

 
Paola Pivi’s artistic practice is diverse and enigmatic, commingling the familiar with the alien. Often working with commonly identifiable objects which are modified to introduce a new scale, material or color, Pivi challenges audiences to change their point of view. Spanning sculpture, video, photography, performance and installation, Pivi’s practice trespasses perceived limits to make possible what before seemed impossible. Born in Milan, she presently lives and works in between Italy and Anchorage, Alaska, USA.
 
Valentino Menghi was born in 1973 in Cesena, Italy. Graduating from the Academy of Arts in Bologna, he is an artist, illustrator, satirical cartoonist and extemporaneous draftsman performer at events. He has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Italy, Spain and Germany. As a cartoonist he has published in several Italian magazines. As an illustrator he has three publications and a personal illustrated book which is planned for 2021. The two authors met on Facebook, and for more context on the experience click here.
 

MOLLY CRABAPPLE

Sink, Old Year!

December 31, 2020

 

 
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun, (with Marwan Hisham), which was long-listed for a National Book Award in 2018. Her reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and elsewhere. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Her animated short “A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” was nominated for an Emmy award in 2019.
 

KARLA CLAUDIO-BETANCOURT

I saw the future… is wooooonderful…there are no puertorricans

January 13, 2021

 

 
Karla Claudio-Betancourt is a multidisciplinary artist from Borikén working mostly with illustration, natural pigments, text, and video. Her creative practice is guided by ethnobotany, oral history, and Caribbean indigenous mythology. She runs an ethnobotanical creative lab called La Recolecta, which documents and studies the potential of wild plants as a means of reclaiming food, medical, and creative sovereignty.
 

CURTIS TALWST SANTIAGO

Boogie Nights

February 26, 2021

 

 
The Canadian-Trinidadian artist’s practice involves mixed-media miniatures, drawings using a mix of graphite with paint, charcoal, pastel, and aerosol paint, as well as performance. Santiago studied as an apprentice of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. He has exhibited internationally at venues such as The Drawing Center, New York, NY; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; The New Museum, New York, NY; The Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; and the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, among others. Considering himself decentralized, Santiago is currently living and working in Munich, Germany.

 

ANDREA BOWERS & DEEENA METZGER

Now That We Know

March 12, 2021

 

 
Through documentation of contemporary activists focused on women’s rights, migrant justice, workers’ rights, and climate justice, Andrea Bowers commits to an intersectional feminism that dismantles gender privilege and builds community that collectively cares for one another. Her multivalent art practice documents and honors the activists whose everyday actions forge meaningful change. Andrea Bowers lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Bowers is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Andrew Kreps in New York, NY, Capitain Petzel in Berlin, Kauffman Repetto in Milan, and Jessica Silverman in San Francisco.
 
Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, and healer, who calls community into Council in order to address extinction, climate dissolution, and social and political chaos. She conducts training groups on the spiritual, creative, political, and ethical aspects of healing and peacemaking, drawing deeply on alliance with spirit and the natural world, Indigenous teachings and many wisdom traditions. She calls these values forth through the 19 Ways which provide the means to radically change our minds and culture on behalf of the continuity of all life and also through a Literature of Restoration. She has convened ReVisioning Medicine for physicians, mental health practitioners, and healers for 17 years seeking medical practices that do no harm, and carry the ways and consciousness of medicine people and healer. Read the full poem that appears around the border of this comic by Metzger here.
 

COMMUNITY COMICS

 
To amplify the voices of Creative Time Comics 2020, we are opening up this initiative to our community members to share their own original responses. Creative Time invites participants to submit timely and original comics as a rapid-response to address any of the multiple pandemics right now. This exercise is a space for cathartic, responsive experimentation. It also affirms the vital importance of artists’ voices in shaping contemporary discourse, while exploring the digital realm as an expansive and dynamic public space.
 
Participants are invited to submit their original comics on Instagram, using the hashtag #CTComics2020, from July 1 to 31, 2020. Please tag @creativetime in the post and DM us to let us know it is live. We will review posts on a rolling basis and share some of our favorites on Instagram and our website in the weeks to come. Download the template here!
 
COMMUNITY GUIDELINES
We want to encourage you to create a comic about your experiences right now.
 
Creative Time reserves the right to pass on any submission that does not follow our or Instagram’s community guidelines.
 
Can I submit a previously made comic?
Comics should have been produced within the last 3 months and make reference to the times that we are in.
 
What format should I use?
All comics must use a 1:1 aspect ratio. You’re free to react against, challenge, and subvert the grid as much as you wish, as long as the piece is contained by the outermost square. This is not meant to box you in, but rather to offer a starting platform through which to realize your ideas; we encourage creativity.
 
What medium can the Comic be?
You are welcome to create a digital work or hand-drawn illustration; the medium is truly up to you. The image should be Hi Res and if there is text, should be legible.
 
How do I submit my comic?
You can submit your comic by posting it on Instagram as a post or story with the hashtag #CTComics2020 and tagging @creativetime, and/or direct messaging us through there. If you do not use Instagram or social media please submit your comic through the form here.
 
When can I submit?
Comics will be accepted on a rolling basis from July 1 to July 31, 2020. For questions, email info@creativetime.org.

 

PROJECT SUPPORT

Project support for Creative Time Comics 2020 is generously provided by Marquise Stillwell and Sara Vance Waddell.