French artist Julien Nonnon suggests putting color into our quarantine period and offers a booklet of ten coloring boards, pending the next release of the first volume of “Colors of Crisis”. Designed as an open and participatory artwork, this illuminated comic strip takes up the highlights of the global crisis that we are going through with the Covid-19.
Street Artist specialist in video-mapping, Julien Nonnon is known for having projected his creations and his luminous frescoes all over the world. Deprived of his outings in the street and his meetings with the public, he wishes to create a new interaction through the expression of a coloring book committed, funny and factual. Realizing that he is experiencing something exceptional, both personally and collectively, the artist had fun compiling the highlights of the beginning of this crisis, in comics, punctuated by false ads and hobby games.
“I tried to capture the contradictions and the ideological postures of our leaders, by transcribing word for word their speech, relying on powerful images of the news,” explains Nonnon.
Indeed, the artist’s drawings are accompanied by QR-codes, these small barcodes to be scanned with a smartphone, referring directly to the original articles and videos thus allowing a funny and a better understanding of the events. We can review the speech where Boris Johnson says he continues shaking hands a little while before becoming infected himself, or a Jair Bolsonaro in the streets of Brasilia, claiming he is stronger than the virus.
“The apparent carelessness of our politicians in the face of this pandemic, with the consequences that we know, becomes laughable and grotesque,” continues Nonnon. “No need to really push the point, our leaders have become their own extreme caricature.”
Much more than an anti-stress art therapy book, Julien Nonnon offers us an emotional outlet, during this imposed lockdown, leaving the possibility for all to choose the color of our own feelings and sensitivity. In a graphic style that is both precise and refined, close to the “clear line” found in Hergé and EP Jacobs, the artist allows us to give free rein to our imagination and spend a pleasant moment with our felts, brushes and tablets.
Color of Crisis is available in French and English here UK – FR.