A group of Iranian artists wrote an open letter to the global counterparts regarding the outbreak of the Coronavirus, which reads as follows:
“Corona is not just a virus, it is a simple and historic question that is waiting for complex answers from the people and governments of the world. Can Iran’s answer to this question match the other countries, while its breaths are limited by global sanctions?
All of us, no matter what our nationality is or what country we are from, are citizens of a borderless utopia called ‘ART’ which exists in a world called ‘CULTURE’. No superpower can prohibit us from being members of our ART nation. In our collective fantasy world, whether we are Asian, European, American or African, we all have a unique gene for understanding culture, an influential talent to make the people understand, as well as abilities for analyzing current trends and cause changes.
We all create narratives and images with our works of art, using our individual taste and styles and cultural characteristics (whether with or without faith) for peace over war, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and always for our salvation and redemption.
Our societies of artists strive to improve our nations with our collective works, despite being much smaller than the countries in which we live. Even though the powers and politics that ‘be’ have created gaps to keep us separate, we have become stronger and bolder and determined and influential in many ways in order to transfer our humanity and collective messages to the world.
At present, every one of us regardless of geographic or political situations has come face to face with a common enemy. We need our message to be passed on as hastily as possible. We are all equally vulnerable to this microscopic adversary. The salvation of one depends on the salvation of all.
Corona is not just a virus, it is a simple and historic question that is waiting for complex answers from the people and governments of the world. Can Iran’s answer to this question match the other countries, while its breaths are limited by global sanctions?
Is it not rational that the response of artists from around the world to Corona will be different and more effective than those of world politicians?This crisis will pass, with small or catastrophic losses, but the collection of tales will also remain. The stories of exhausted nurses dancing in contaminated hospital hallways to raise the morale of patients, as they hide their worries about the lack of medicines and basic hospital necessities; stories of physicians who haven’t been home in weeks and are forced to work without masks, gloves or gowns as they search for corona victims in the hallways of hospitals.
These will all remain in the micro-historical memories of our time and will be heard by all, sooner or later, either from us or from you. We hope it is not too late for influential and unified artists of the world to tell these stories of the injustices toward the Iranian people, so the powerful politicians of the world may make the right choices.
The people of Iran are now facing the Corona crisis that you are aware of, as well as the crisis of “Unjustly Imposed Sanctions” that you might not be aware of. For us -the artists of Iran- it is important to know that when our large numbers of infected are waiting for their turn and facing shortages of medical supplies, what do you think? What do you say? and what will you do?”
