The Quarantine Gallery

 

The story of how the most exclusive art gallery in the Falkland Islands was created.

 

It can quite quickly feel like a soulless place. You get told the number of your hotel room, pick up your bags, walk along the corridor, and shut the door behind you. And save for two 25-minute slots outside in the tiny exercise yard, that’s it for 14 days. There would be people who you travelled down with, people you’d spent 19 hours with on the same MOD flight who you now wouldn’t see for two weeks. The outside time was definitely something to be grateful for, though. It gave a little structure to each day if nothing else. We were buddied up for that time, keeping strictly two metres apart - absolutely forbidden from licking each other. But even that social interaction was short lived – each of us left again to shrink back into our own isolated existence. While of course I can only speak with authority about my own experience – an authority which became murky at best – I think it would be generally true to say that most people had good and bad days, and on the bad days one of the prevalent feelings was that of being disconnected. I find it interesting to think about the fact that there was nothing actually stopping us from walking out of our room, of walking out of that hotel, and finding ourselves down by the sea, saying hello to every passing stranger we meet. The barriers and the walls we put up were therefore effectively all in the mind. We knew that if we broke quarantine, we would have to start the 14 days again, and if we couldn’t face that, then we would have to go home – there could be no onward travel to Antarctica. There was also the added incentive not to break the 5-day test-to-release quarantine imposed by the Falkland Islands Government – that came with a hefty fine, a prison sentence, or possibly both. In our darker moments we wondered if they would knock the days already spent in quarantine off our prison sentence. Any sense of humour we had left to muster became a little warped. It made me think about and question how I defined freedom, and in doing so I was hit by a realisation which I felt physically in my core. What an incredibly fortunate life I have lived that I have not had my freedom impinged upon enough to ever need to really define what freedom is. Of course, the word comes with vague and general ideas – some of which may have become somewhat lazy in their meaning and application. I do not believe that freedom is the same thing as doing whatever we please, or at least not without both accepting and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. We are also responsible for how we deal with and cope with the actions of others, and we are responsible for how we respond to external events and things. I suppose it all comes down to the choices that we make, to have the freedom to chose between one thing or another, and sometimes the choice that we make is not the one that makes us feel the most free.

 

I have noticed, over the past 18 months, that the times which have been characterised by unusual levels of isolation and disconnection have brought out a greater need to express myself creatively. It was during the first lockdown of 2020 that I really started drawing, and I would write letters to friends and family with greater frequency than before. I found the communication and connection offered by social media, while not entirely useless – was largely inadequate. But in times of uncertainty, and in times of feeling scared, we reach out for anything, and in social media we get quick and easy words. You’re desperately searching for what you want to hear – something to give a sense of meaning and to restore a sense of place. They are words which are easy to be misinterpreted though, and words which can be misleading. This invariably leaves you feeling just as empty as before - in fact, it sometimes deepens the sense of separation and despair. So, while not abandoning social media entirely, I do find that I am spending less time on it in favour of slower, more thought-out forms of communication - in search of better, and more human ways. The beauty of a handwritten letter for example, is that you have captured a moment of your life on a physical piece of paper, and that moment and that piece of paper ends up in the hands of someone else. It is not hidden behind a screen, it’s not to a world which you can never see or feel; it is a tangible thread which joins two people, and the magic of it is – you just have to pull that thread towards you. It may be as simple as that to regain a sense of our humanity, and our connection to other people.

And so, in reminding myself of this and rediscovering my conviction for it, after a few days had passed in quarantine I unpacked my pens and started drawing. I was also left a whiteboard and a pack of whiteboard pens outside my room for the purpose of writing messages for everyone in quarantine to read. This has become something of a regular fixture down in Antarctica over the past couple of years – and while it is something which on occasion can feel quite time consuming and almost a burden, I know the difference it has made to people, and therefore how important it is. It’s also something which I usually enjoy doing – both the process of doing it, and the conversations and connections it creates. Initially it was just the whiteboard which I planned to leave by the entrance/exit to the exercise yard – the one place where every individual person would get to pass by and see. Gradually though I started to put up some of my drawings as well, and the occasional thought which I had jotted down on a scrap piece of paper. I asked and encouraged other people to get involved, to add and to contribute their own material. I thought that it might help people to feel less disconnected, I hoped that it might bring a little soul to the place. And so, The Quarantine Gallery was formed – perhaps the most exclusive art gallery in the Falkland Islands. It was wonderful to see it develop over the days and weeks; there are drawings, poems, crocheted animals, and the latest addition was a ship made from tin foil (saved up from the meals which are left outside our rooms three times a day). And there’s no end point to it – it is left to grow and develop throughout the Antarctic summer season, something for every person who comes through quarantine in the Falklands to see and to be a part of. Perhaps, it’ll still be there even after we all start to head back north again, as we head home for the northern hemisphere spring.