Studio Joag works with artists from various walks of life around Bangladesh with the ambition to improve and enhance the aesthetics of homes, offices, public spaces, brands and any other area that needs that extra bit of artistic touch.

 

As part of a collection of coronavirus awareness pieces that would be available as prints, Farabi Amanullah, the company’s co-founder, recruited me to create an illustration themed ‘Cleanliness Against Coronavirus’.

 

Given this theme and the situational context of Bangladesh being in its first lockdown, I thought of using the illustration as a means to communicate what common households can do while at home to maintain hygiene during the pandemic. At the same time, I wanted to highlight having trust in the wider community including essential frontline workers who were working hard to ensure life goes on as normal while the then-unknown virus is on the loose.

 

To communicate this in a simple, engaging, and communicative way through artwork, I took inspiration from a doll-house concept and created fictional characters to represent a typical household in an urban part of Dhaka, the most populated city in the country.