The poster by artist Luu Yen The carries a message that wearing masks adequately helps efficiently prevent COVID-19.
The poster of a masked healthcare worker standing valiant as a soldier, flanked by a bold slogan proclaiming “to stay at home is to love your country” is one of the propaganda posters which shows Vietnam’s spirit in the fight against COVID-19.
The newspaper quoted the poster’s author, artist Le Duc Hiep, saying, “After the Government called for people to stay at home to help prevent Covid-19, I was browsing social networks and saw many people still gathering and going out to coffee shops and restaurants… that really bothered me.”
“I wanted to make something that can go viral, raise awareness and inspire people to do the right thing,” he adds. “I chose the propaganda style because it’s familiar to Vietnamese people and this style always invokes patriotic emotions.”
According to the article, Hiep is not the only Vietnamese artist drawing propaganda posters on COVID-19 prevention. Artist Pham Trung Ha “joined forces with the Ministry of Health and Vietnam Stamp Company to work on two designs, each with the aim of ‘sending clear messages of solidarity in the fight against COVID-19,” the article said.
“One shows medical workers busy testing for coronavirus; behind them a clenched fist rises, symbolising resistance and defiance,” the article described a poster.
The article also noted that despite undergoing treatment for cancer, 73-year-old artist Luu Yen The submitted two designs to Vietnam’s culture ministry, both of which were accepted and now hang over city streets.
It earmarked female artist Huynh Kim Lien’s saying of determination in joining hands with the Government in the fight against the pandemic: “In Vietnam, the government says we are at war with the virus; so, as artists, we do our job in a war: we draw.”
The Guardian appreciated Vietnam’s prevention of COVID-19. “Despite a border with China, the nation has kept confirmed cases low through quarantining, contact tracing, testing - and propaganda”./.