Alice in Lockdown: Illustrations by Marta Zubieta that explore the madness of 2020 and the global pandemic

Bristol-based designer and illustrator Marta Zubieta is taking us down the rabbit hole with a new series of artworks that pay tribute to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland whilst exploring the impact of this year's global pandemic.

Entitled Alice in Lockdown, the "adult illustrations for forever teenagers" follow Marta's usual style, inspired by '90s cartoons, sci-fi, lowbrow, pop-surrealist art and Latin folklore. Bringing a vibrant palette to often bleak subjects, she takes a closer look at millennial culture and its issues through pink-tinted glasses, neon colours and dreamy characters.

"I wanted to explore the confusion and self-transformation journey we have gone through since the beginning of lockdown," Marta says. "Alice is the perfect metaphor to explore the reality of the pandemic. The original story represents a child's struggle to survive the confusing world of adults. Going down the rabbit hole, in Carroll's masterpiece, is a representation of going into the unconscious. Covid-19 seems to be the hole that has trapped us at home, forcing us to deal with our inner monsters but also with the voice we listen to the most; the mass media."

As Alice has to contend with feeling too big for a house, we too have had to cope with being confined inside our four walls – binge-watching Netflix and eating too much pizza. Marta's version of the famous rabbit hole features newspapers, corporate logos and hints of the nightmare events of the last eight months. While Boris Johnson himself becomes the Mad Hatter, a puppet masterminded by a sinister Dominic Cummings, and Donald Trump is, of course, the Queen of Hearts.

Discover more of Marta's work at martazubieta.com or follow her on Instagram.

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