Aida Silvestri, Coronaquilt
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, artist Aida Silvestri has been invited to work with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust staff from a Black, Asian and minority ethnic background. Using the traditional quilting pattern called ‘Corona’, Silvestri will work with staff to create silhouette portraits, before encouraging collaborators to populate the artwork with words reflecting on the pandemic. This could be poetry, emotions, feelings or hopes. The patchwork portraits will then be collated to create a large artwork which will be displayed across the Trust’s three main hospitals.
Coronaquilt Silhouette will form part of an exhibition that the Arts team at Imperial Health Charity is developing to reflect on COVID-19 and the effect it has had on the Trust and its community. This part of the display focuses on staff from ethnic minority backgrounds due to the disproportionate clinical outcomes and the high percentage of Trust staff affected by this. The full exhibition will be permanently displayed in prominent sites at St Mary’s, Hammersmith and Charing Cross.