Are You an Artist? The UN and World Health Organization Want You to Submit Designs That Inform the Public About Coronavirus

This week, the United Nations
and the World Health Organization teamed up to launch an international open call
for artworks about beating COVID-19.

The competition, open now
through April 9, asks artists to submit designs that translate
“critical public health messages” about the disease. Submissions
can take any form—visuals, videos, audio tracks—so long as they
capture one of the UN’s five “key messages”: Physical Distancing;
Know the Symptoms; Myth Busting; Do More, Donate; and the
ever-important Kindness Contagion.

An as-yet-unnamed panel will
select a minimum of 10 winners whose work will be shared globally
by the UN’s media platforms. The rest of the shortlisted
submissions will be made publicly available for download on a
dedicated website starting April 22.

“We are in an unprecedented
situation and the normal rules no longer apply,” says UN
Secretary-General António Guterres on the competition’s website. “We cannot resort to the usual tools in such
unusual times. The creativity of the responses must match the
unique nature of this crisis—the magnitude of the responses must
match its scale.

For many artists the decision to
use their talents to help educate the public in this moment of
international crisis will be a welcome one. But coming amid
unprecedented economic uncertainty, the competition, which doesn’t
pay winners, has also stoked a long-simmering debate about
exploiting artists’ labor in the guise of public
service. 

Artists online and in the
comments
section of the webpage
have criticized Talenthouse, the company hosting the competition,
for asking for free work.

Many have pointed to a bullet
point under the “opportunity” section of the brief, which suggests
that entrants will “potentially receive additional exposure through
having their work showcased in digital galleries, physical
exhibitions amongst other opportunities.” In recent years, the practice of asking artists
to work for “exposure” has been widely criticized (there is even a
popular Twitter account, @forexposure_txt, that just aggregates the
most outrageous examples of the practice).

“Talenthouse would never
normally promote an opportunity where the creator’s work is used
with no fees attached, but these are unprecedented times,”
Talenthouse co-founder Maya Bogle told the online
publication Arts
Professional when asked
about the lack of payment. “All the money donated to the UN is
being used to support medical efforts around the world, and while
we would normally be the first to champion the payment of proper
fees to artists and creatives, it feels like this is the one time
to make an exception.”

Talenthouse, which brands itself
as a platform for connecting artists with global brands, took over
the open call earlier this week after the original
competition brief, circulated by
the UN through a Google doc,
was overwhelmed with “exceptional interest.” 

Bogle says that, as of
today, Talenthouse has
received 2,261 multimedia
submissions from around the world, and that she expects “many
thousands more” by the deadline on April 9.

Interested artists can submit
their designs here.

The post Are You an Artist? The UN and World Health
Organization Want You to Submit Designs That Inform the Public
About Coronavirus appeared first on artnet News.