Artist and educator Piotr Szyhalski took the stage on March 1 to launch the return of Insights, an annual design lecture series put on by AIGA Minnesota and the Walker Art Center. Fitting his theme—his artistic practice and his yearlong COVID-19 Reports project—he spoke from the Walker’s empty cinema to online-only audiences. He began, as his daily drawing project did, listing off current statistics related to COVID: those killed by the pandemic since it began, those killed the previous day, etc. “So this is the context for today,” he said, and then, choking up, there in that empty auditorium, he looked at another dark context: the brutal war in Ukraine. “I am really feeling the weight of history today,” he said, putting the Ukrainian flag on the screen (as far as I can tell, his words mark the first public acknowledgement of the war by this contemporary art center). An artist with rare heart, vision, and technical skill, he went on to dig into that history, from how his upbringing in Poland helped shape his aesthetic and views on free speech, propaganda, and politics to the newer histories, years and months and days old, of corruption and disinformation around this deadly pandemic. Piotr was kind enough to mention my April 2020 article on his COVID project, “NO HOLDS BARRED! A Look at Piotr Szyhalski's Daily COVID-19 Reports,” which at the time—only a month into the project—helped him think about the series as a continuous project instead of just a series of daily reflections (you can watch it here).

And to quote Piotr, “Slava Ukraini!”