Creative Practices during Lockdown: Online Foundation Student Amelie Adam

Taking classes during lockdown and having to turn our own spaces into studios made us all have to face some new restrictions in our creative process.

To continue our ‘Creative Practices during Lockdown’ series, and share how students managed to stay creative during lowkdown and how they conquered the new contraints, here is the second interview of the series.

For this interview, 2nd Year BFA Fine Arts student Mia Domenech talked with Online Foundation student Amelie Adam, from the Republic of Mauritius. 

How did confinement impact your work?

When the second confinement was announced, I was in the third week of a 4 weeks’ 3D project – for which I was working with a 5L oil barrel. I decided to go back home in Mauritius and couldn’t travel with my barrel and had to start from scratch a new project and deliver a high-quality art piece within a week. Also, the Mauritian government requires everyone who wishes to get into the country to quarantine in a hotel room for 15 days, so I had to construct my piece in my room with what I had on hand. I
had some wires and lots of covid masks. I was inspired by my environment, and wanted to denounce the hypocrisy that happened during the first lockdown; we all saw how the planet was “healing” and most of us agreed that once we could
get our lives back, we had to change our way of living and change our habits to more eco-friendly ones. Though, once we could go outside again, we all jumped back to our lives pre-covid and even worse, we increased pollution with single-use masks, latex gloves, sanitisers’ plastic bottles, etc. Most of the above end up in nature, endangering the wildlife. Being in Mauritius, a small island in the Indian Ocean, I wanted to raise awareness about sea turtles, inspired by Martina Badini photograph as shown below.

How did you find solutions to the new restrictions of online classes and a home studio?

I was locked up in a hotel room without access to any materials that wasn’t already with me, and this restriction was helpful in a way because it meant that I could not be distracted by tons of different media. With my professor, we arranged some Zoom meeting during the class “normal” hours and in-between I would work alone. I could always reach out if I had any question. He was very present through the whole week. I had to work day and night on this in order to finish it on time but this also helped making the quarantining go by faster. I had arranged a table on the terrace and worked from there. I had a pair of pliers but no gloves, and my hands were in a terrible shape afterwards! I’d listen to music and just start arranging the wires and the masks.

What helped you stay inspired and keep creating?

I was lucky enough to have a small terrace with a sea view, it really helped keeping me sane. I had amazing day light also, which made the “blue” of the Covid masks rather nice. While being in my room, I barely had any distractions, which made me really focus on my work, along with the time constraint. I was always thinking about this project and trying to find ways of
improving the turtle features, how to work better with the wire, how to take pictures to show my work in the best possible way… My professor was always available for a quick Zoom meeting or by email, sending me lots of references, so I always felt that I was well surrounded and guided, even though I was so far away.

You can read the first interview of the series, with BFA Photography Student Kirsten Franks, here.