Artwork Description
Covid No 19- Sarcelle Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print on 290gsm MOAB Fine Art Paper by Graffiti Pop Art and Street Artist Denial.
2021 Signed & Numbered Limited Edition of 19 Sarcelle Covid19 Chanel Hand Sanitizer Virus Variant. Numbered, Signed, Stamped on Reverse Archival Pigment Print on MOAB Fine Art Paper 290 GSM Size 18" x 24"
Denial’s COVID No. 19: Luxury Branding in the Age of Global Crisis
Denial’s COVID No. 19 is a striking archival pigment print released in 2021 as a limited edition of 19, each hand-signed, numbered, and stamped on 290gsm MOAB fine art paper. The work appropriates the form of a Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle, replacing its iconic label with a fictional product name: COVID No. 19 Hand Sanitizer. Rendered with hyper-clean digital precision, the image reconfigures the aesthetics of high fashion to comment on the absurdities of pandemic-era consumerism. The hand sanitizer bottle is presented with all the visual authority of a luxury good, transforming an object of necessity into a parody of status and desire. At the core of this piece is a brutal cultural observation: during a global health emergency, everyday tools of survival—like sanitizer and masks—were elevated to symbols of identity, fashion, and economic access. Denial’s rebranding of Chanel’s perfume into a virus-era commodity confronts this shift head-on. The artwork doesn’t merely lampoon luxury—it reveals how systems of marketing can absorb trauma, repackage it, and sell it back to the public. The Chanel-style labeling is clinical yet elegant, a nod to how visual minimalism often masks corporate manipulation.
Commercial Aesthetics as Subversive Weaponry
Denial’s artistic strategy centers on the theft and recontextualization of commercial language. With COVID No. 19, the use of vector-sharp line work, realistic light reflections, and exacting product design mimics advertising to the point of deception. This imitation is intentional. The viewer is meant to initially read the image as authentic—something from a fashion magazine or cosmetics campaign—before the irony of the label snaps into focus. The dissonance between form and content invites a critique of the capitalist tendency to aestheticize suffering. This visual methodology ties directly into the ethos of Street Pop Art & Graffiti Artwork. Denial’s roots in unauthorized public messaging and subcultural image disruption remain present, even as the work exists in a fine art format. The absence of spray drips or rough textures does not diminish the rebellion. Instead, it retools the graphic language of commercial persuasion to undermine itself from within. What looks like a product pitch is, in fact, a visual accusation. The pandemic is not the subject—it is the branding of the pandemic that comes under fire.
Street Pop Art as Pandemic Documentation
COVID No. 19 operates as both satire and historical record. It captures a cultural moment when survival tools became luxury statements, when scarcity was linked to exclusivity, and when branding extended even to medical supplies. Denial’s artwork speaks to the way modern crises are not only experienced but marketed—how the fear of illness was filtered through the same systems that sell beauty, fashion, and lifestyle. The sanitizer bottle becomes a symbol not of protection, but of consumption. By fusing the iconography of fashion with the reality of a global pandemic, Denial forces the viewer to reconsider the boundaries between design and ethics, branding and survival. The visual simplicity of COVID No. 19 hides a layered indictment of how quickly commercial aesthetics can strip events of meaning. In the tradition of Street Pop Art & Graffiti Artwork, this piece turns familiar symbols against themselves, exposing the fragility of culture’s glossy surfaces when confronted with real human urgency.
