New Zealand Varian 2020

To me, the fact that Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection could be asymptomatic and yet contagious is the scariest part. You cannot trust anyone, including yourself, as anybody could be a “silent” spreader of the pandemic. This characteristic of Covid-19 was the starting point of this work.

I have reconstructed a map of New Zealand using a set of jigsaw puzzles and paper maps of New Zealand. I wanted to create this illusion that from a distance, it looks like an ordinary map of New Zealand - but when you look closer, you notice that every corner of the land has been switched around randomly. This demonstrates how every corner of New Zealand was affected by this virus, regardless of gender, age, status or ethnic background. 

For this piece of work, the process of making it is as important as the final work itself. I completed the original jigsaw puzzle first. Then I searched to find an identical match of the coastline of the individual puzzle fragment from a random location of the paper map. I then cut and pasted the identical coastline image of the paper map on the puzzle surface to replace the original puzzle image to make it “asymptomatic”. And just like contact tracing, the audiences are challenged to figure out where this particular paper map image originated from, with little or no clue.  

Jigsaw puzzle was used for two reasons: it was one of the most popular activities during the lockdown, and it also required “collectivism” - if one piece of puzzle goes missing or misplaced, the task cannot be completed. For the “team of five million”, if one person does not follow the rules, Covid-19 could affect the whole country. 

How people respond to Covid-19 may differ depending on one’s political, economic, religious and cultural beliefs. I find it interesting to observe how different societies behave in this time of collective crisis, balancing the interest of the community against the interest of individuals. Whichever spectrum you stand on, we are all in this together. Kia kaha Aotearoa New Zealand.