In times of global crisis and uncertainty, art often gets dismissed as frivolous luxury. But artist Mesma Belsaré argues that art isn't what we indulge when everything is fine. It is the medicine we need most when everything is broken. Drawing from her experience as an immigrant artist who left medical school for Delhi College of Art, she explores how artists throughout history have responded to crisis not by stopping, but by documenting, preserving, and bearing witness.

In his 1929 essay titled Nottingham and the Mining Country, the ‘Green Novelist’ D. H. Lawrence wrote, “The real tragedy of England, as I...