The Pandemic Has Made a Mockery of Minimalism
No comparison for the coronavirus pandemic is quite apt, in part because no world-stopping catastrophe in recent memory has been so quiet. Terrorism, war, hurricanes, and earthquakes create excessive, ultra-visual chaos: fireballs, rubble, water, wounds. The virus, meanwhile, cannot be seen, and the crisis it’s created has, in a horrifying way, tidied the world. Just as each added tally in the death count represents a subtraction from the human whole, the visceral and visual impact of the pandemic has been a mounting absence.
Everywhere you look, there’s deletion. The streets have been cleared of bustle. Masks replace that most idiosyncratic thing, the human face, with blankness. Protective gear renders medical teams into interchangeable forms. In ICUs, ventilators and tubes obscure the faces of patients. Grocery-store aisles are
