Escape ( Covid-19 ) illustration by Simo Liu shows a lone character trying to escape from different rooms, looking for the Utopia. Those rooms represent a series of natural and man-made disasters that occurred in 2020, such as COVID-19, locust plagues, forest fires, floods, and earthquakes. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s lives badly, with limited flights, travel bans, social distancing and many others. These disasters have made us overwhelmed. We want to escape from that chaos to find the Utopia.

To make the illustration “Escape”, my inspiration came from the film “Parasite” as well as M.C. Escher’s paintings. From the film “Parasite”, the living room and basement were two different spaces, and the people who lived in the basement were very hard to move to the “upper level” space. M.C. Escher’s paintings also show some contradictory spaces, which are extremely difficult to escape from. From those inspirations, I composed my drawing with nine different spaces, eight individual difficulties and one hope—the Utopia. Even though we are suffering from so many difficulties during this time period, there is always a light in the darkness.

Simo tried to carry the message about coronavirus via my illustration “ Escape” to reflect the world of the difficulties brought about by the pandemic and how to lighten the difficult times. Also, Simo hopes this piece will warn us to think about the relationship between human and nature, how to balance our ecosystem and protect our home—Earth.