Charlie Cojab

Not One of the 1,652,906

Artist Statement

Covid-19 has impacted every human in the world, and it will continue to do so for years to come. It showed us the fragility of human life. The fact that a virus from a small bat is capable of killing so many people should scare everyone. At the moment of writing this, Covid-19 has killed 1,652,906 human lives. That number is only from confirmed carriers of the virus, so the real number could be much larger. The number 1,652,906 tells one story, but there is no way to know the much larger number of the people it has affected without killing them. All the people who lost their jobs, loved ones, or just their sanity should also be remembered. For this work, I wanted to show my experience of testing positive for the virus and the isolation that came from it. I was hesitant to do this story because I did not think anyone would want to hear it. I have been fortunate, and I am aware of my privilege. I have been able to survive this whole pandemic financially, mentally, and physically and sadly many, many people have not. However, as I started working on it I realized that even though my struggles could be much worse, there is value in them. With these exposures, I explored the theme of love and its challenges as my girlfriend, and I had to lock down together. I wanted to show how we survived our symptoms and by showing movement, how we used the limited space that we inhabited to continue with our lives. Using the light from our devices as the main source of lighting in a lot of the pictures showed how it was our only access to the outside world. Even though it was challenging, we were able to adapt and flourish from our situation. I would not wish this on anyone, but it brought us together like nothing else before it. Now that it is over, we both are glad that it happened as it did and that we could rely on each other while it did.