ARTIST: YANDISOKUHLE KHUMALO
COUNTRY: ESWATINI
MATERIALS USED: 2H PENCIL, HB PENCIL, TISSUE PAPER and ERASER
My name is Yandisokuhle Khumalo, a Swazi citizen who has been affected greatly by the new Coronavirus. I am a matriculant at Sisekelo High School which means that at the end of the year I complete my high school education. The pandemic we’re facing globally has affected me because I have been forced to stay at home and work to complete my education online. It’s very tricky because as an individual you have to be self-disciplined and devoted to your schoolwork if you don’t want to be distracted by other things at home. My June examinations have been cancelled as there was no way to write them in a controlled environment and this is an inconvenience for me because the June exams were to be used to apply to different universities to secure provisional acceptance.
Furthermore, I am a person who has always dreamt of making a living using the talents that have been bestowed upon me. The Coronavirus has been an inconvenience because there isn’t a lot that I can get done from home. For example, this competition is the first platform I’ve been provided with to showcase my talent in art to the world. Other than this competition the only places I would be able to showcase my art in are locked down. My drawing represents the people who are most vulnerable to the Coronavirus, those people being the elderly. I drew a senior citizen with a face mask on in the sense that I am trying to get the message across that the elderly are greatly affected by the virus hence they should be protected from it because their immune systems are not as strong as the youths. I have a grandparent and losing her to the coronavirus would have very negative effects on our family.
Winning the competition would only be an incentive as the real prize is raising awareness of the virus through my artwork and encouraging people to fight it together as a human race.
