TITLE: THROUGH THE EYES OF A NEEDLE: ART IN A TIME OF CORONAVIRUS
AUTHOR: DARLINGTON CHIBUEZE ANUONYE (Editor)
GENRE: NON-FICTION
NO. OF PAGES: 55
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2021
ISBN: NIL
PUBLISHER: PRAXIS
REVIEWER: NKET-AWAJI ALPHEAUS
Through the Eye of a Needle: Art in a Time of Coronavirus is a collection of twelve masterfully crafted essays from well conscious minds from Nigeria, Rwanda, America, Italy, South Africa and Australia. But, considering the contributory stance of An Art in Silence, which is the introduction to the book, I would say the collection has thirteen well-crafted essays, instead of twelve. Each essay gives coherence in structure and thematic preoccupation with the others. It was published by Praxis Magazine.
In these moments of silence mixed with obtrusive clamour, the clamour for economic unease, hardship, disappointment and silence caused by the untold lockdown (which makes earth, in some quarters of the world, a graveyard) artists speak, and their voices are loud. The artists, “caught, but not trapped in the fearsome web of the pandemic”, (as Darlington Chibueze says in the introduction), are (like) philosophers. They listen to the throbbing of the world, sieve hindsight from the past, insight from the moment, and foresight of what the world and humanity will look like after the storm.
So, we need to listen to the artists, for “they do not lament so inconsolably about their private loss; they rather transcend their own misfortune in their human attempt to console the grieving world, ultimately establishing kinship with the dead and the dying, proving, especially in this time of physical lockdown, that the warmth art offers can dispel loneliness and chase away fear”. But this is not the only reason why we should listen to the artists (howbeit a better part of the reasons).
Through the Eye of a Needle opens the sore of the world. In this collection one is face to face with the effect of the pandemic in a different part of the world; even in the lives of people in different places. Told with the insight of the artists, who are also victims of the pandemic, the essays offer us room into the hearts of the artists as well as those (the parts of the world which we never have the opportunity – except the ones carried by our local news – to know how it affects) in other parts of the earth. They are told with the amount of lucidity with which anyone would find them appealing and easy-to-go-with.
