Life + Love

Vancouver Mural Festival – Quarantine Edition


Well, this is a little ray of sunshine in what is our darkest timeline, non?

Vancouverites are still self-isolating and taking utmost care against COVID-19. We’ve been staying at home, and only venturing out for essentials for the past couple of months, while the health authorities have been trying to get a handle on the pandemic.

We’ve now reached phase 2: the re-opening of  businesses like hair salons, retail stores, restaurants + cafes, museums, art galleries + libraries, child care, gyms, and medical services such as dentistry, physio, chiros, and RMTs (which is one that I’m most excited for and in much need of).

If infection rates continue to decline, we should expect in phase 3 that movie theatres, camping, hotels and resorts will begin to re-open.  Unfortunately, large scale conventions, night clubs, casinos, sports, concerts + international tourism are not going to happen for the foreseeable future.

With all the boarded up shops from the past couple of months blighting the downtown core, the good folks at the Vancouver Mural Festival had invited 40 local artists to create murals inspiring hope, joy, and solidarity. The added benefit being to deter looters and to make the city look less apocalyptic. Theses public art installations can be seen around Gastown, and Robson + Granville streets.

Sean and I both love street art and supporting the Vancouver Mural Festival, so we masked up and checked as many as we could before the stores pulled the boards down for their re-opening. And why yes, that is a lightning printed mask I’m wearing – thank you for noticing!

covid mural at club monaco
covid murals in front of banana republic
covid mural at muji
happy face mural at muji
hope mural in front of a store
covid mural in front of the versace store
covid mural in front of kiehl store
make art while apart store front mural
mural of a heron in front of a store
mural of an angel nurse
smiles are contagious storefront mural
signs hung on hotel belmont
The annual Vancouver Mural Festival is still scheduled to take place later this summer – but how that will look like is just one more thing we have to patiently wait for.

View more photos of these installations on my Flickr album and Instagram. For a peek at what we’ve been up to during quarantine times, hit up my Instagram Stories. Feel free to follow me on Instagram too!

Previous Post Next Post

You Might Also Like

No Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.