A Loose Story About Caring (2021)

Revised third edition of 30

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A Loose Story About Caring

♥♡♥

On a March Tuesday, the university I attend closed down and I had just inadvertently stepped on campus for the last time that semester. It was the night an email had been sent public announcing the news, and I was waiting for my partner in front of the church. The e-mail arrived before him. Somewhere in the email, it said artists have always persisted through hard times, and that in the long run, this will benefit our practice. The implications were a gaffe.

As
if,
we
were
all
just
roaches.

We were walking back to his apartment, and a cop car drove by behind us with mute sirens, slowing down. The cops trailed the block, and our palms were getting sweaty.

So much of our days in the past year have been just going through the motions alongside millions of people dying and getting hurt. On some days, I’ve felt things I can only explain as being close to abject futility:

pacing my bedroom (16.5 steps by 16.5 steps in my size 7.5 feet)
scrolling through the latest Twitter feeds from a protest in a different state
looking up symptoms on WebMD
the Boston police scanner hissing, then going quiet
checking the death count, comparing graphs
signing petitions, writing strongly worded emails
fireworks, a lot of them
spending my savings on mutual-aid
checking my account for a stimulus check
waiting for my friend to text me back that they got home safe that night
trying to calculate the time difference between Boston and another city
who I would have to contact in the case that…

It, unfortunately, became routine at some point, all of it, no matter how much I tried to stop myself from getting used to it.

Right before lockdown, I was doing a series of paintings of myself, my partner, and close friends. Usually, I am a design and text person. At the time, I was reluctant to show them to anyone outside my circle and couldn’t imagine any of my work “being shown”.

I was making them shyly, but being in art school was horrible and bureaucratic, having to trudge along with these paintings only to receive agonizing critique that my work was inherently political because all the bodies were if not queer then people of color. And that was it. People loved talking about it in that overt political way because it fed so neatly into that sort of shallow narrative. It felt like a checkbox in being “relevant”. It was nauseating, and completely ignored each relationship, time, and manic fixation that went into composing them. I think that to care for something is to measure and study it. To that extent, I guess obsessing is also caring, but then there is nuance to that word, and doing it ethically.

Actually, I think obsessions a lot of the time play along with this selfish desire to own something and preserve it for the sake of showcasing it or missing out. I really believe it needs to come from a place of love. I learned that from reading Wojnarowicz. I think that’s a similar disconnect with archives too, and where I think archives become dangerous.

I think about Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark. And then I think about East 100th Street and Gordon Parks. Then I think about Audre Lorde.

I
remember
the
first
time
I
watched
“If
Every
Girl
Had
a
Diary”
and
how
I
wished
I
had
made
it.

In the early months of the pandemic, I tried to ritualize my studio practice, promising myself that I would at least touch a pencil each day, still working on portraits of loved ones. This time it felt entirely compulsive like I tried so hard to remember and relocate my friends, with this impending fear that I would never be able to see them in person again, and we would all retreat into our respective corners of the world. I drew and wrote profusely, but couldn’t justify:

the slight pigmentation under Diego’s eyes
my cat’s black coat morphing into Keith’s hair, both sleeping
Layne’s mullet, then seeing her bleached shave
the number of piercings on Rose
Alberto’s white Nike socks
Freddy’s Vivienne Westwood pearls
Lily saying “Hey Honey”
my drawings inked sparingly on Nicole’s skin
Mahalia’s white latex Gogo boots

The caveat of rituals is that you make a system and structure for yourself but then you can hide behind it. And there is always this linear way of thinking. It’s soothing in a way that it commands order, but then there is this needless guilt when you can’t follow it.

Often it is the irregularity and frenzied state but then the obsessive compulsion to record the ambiance and non-events that drive me to look closer at the thing I’m fixated on. I’ve felt that way a lot lately. It reveals a relationship and thus dialogues with others, things, and yourself. It’s more sustainable that way, at least personally.

I think it all becomes distasteful when the end goal is authorship and presenting a coherent, digested form of something. We’re so used to that mode of thinking, especially in art education and adjacent spaces. It canonizes the work before it even has a chance to live.

The same goes for talking about theories and trends. Theory delineates the way we think and where we stand on things, but it should never redline how we think about art. This is why I enjoy science fiction so much.

So often, I see work being made about theory, and less of theory backing work people desire to make. Or people make complex personal work but then clean it up into neat didactic jargon to be consumed. Sometimes that is nice, but I think a lot of the time it kills it.

I’m
so
glad
you
read
Hegel,
but
that’s
really
annoying
of
you.

♥♡♥

In April, my partner was assisting a photo history class, and we were living together in my apartment. I would hear him grow frustrated over a video conference, with the students violently criticizing Diane Arbus, talking about “the gaze” and voyeurism, and that this material shouldn’t be taught anymore. It sounded like some sort of Sontagian argument, and after, when I asked which Sontag text they were referencing, I was surprised to hear that the students weren’t. He assigned a Herve Guibert reading for the next week.

This argument against Arbus, specifically against the collection of her circus photographs, was that it exploited marginalized bodies for the public’s consumption. I understood where this sentiment was coming from, but in this case, it sounded more so like the argument was censoring and limiting how certain bodies should be looked at, with such gaps in understanding histories and tone. There are more interesting and productive uses for this dialogue than to cancel Arbus. I suggested bringing up Dana Schutz.

Anybody who has looked at Arbus knows that her photographs aren’t violent and that they aren’t manipulated beyond the framing. My partner made a great point, that if anything, with a Rolleiflex, her gaze is actually refracted. Instead of pointing her camera like a gun and “shooting” her subjects, she’s looking down into the camera and bowing.

Last month, we found out that the person who spearheaded the argument against Arbus had sexually harassed someone else. And he continues to take photos of himself and post them on Instagram.

Much of my frustration around this area of censoring arises when people bring up liberal credo as a hard fact without assessing or really understanding the multiplicity of situations and histories. Especially in talking about artwork. What does that accomplish rather than self-righteousness and highlighting difference for the sake of categorization?

♥♡♥

During a friend’s critique recently, where she was considering hiding her pictures behind QR codes, I questioned if there was a point in hiding them in that way. It felt distracting, and I thought that her pictures were strong enough to stand alone. The technology aspect felt like a purely aesthetic choice. And I told her exactly that.

Then some girl accused me of making a value judgment between pixel images versus “the real” and then name-dropped Benjamin and Steyerl.

I addressed her, hoping to understand why she would make that accusation, and if she honestly thought the QR codes were adding anything to the piece. But then she nodded and muted herself.

I keep hearing these convoluted arguments against straight photography, and I think at its core it’s because people are afraid. I think more and more people are afraid to talk about things or show things in a frank way. And maybe I’m wrong and I should be more afraid. But even if that was the case, it’s shrouded with such defensive attitudes while being so fearful of offending, and it creates this paralysis, echoing things we already know will be accepted, echoing things to prove we’re on the right side of one narrative.

The same arguments and fear should translate to painting, in my opinion. It’s relevant to any kind of image-making, really. People forget that painting and photography are similar. It just happens to be more forgiving with painting because there is this illusion that its fiction. Sure it can seem fiction because it is a rendition, but it isn’t tabula rasa. The meat comes from somewhere. There’s also this misconception that painting is singular and photo is multiple. There’s truth to this, especially with cameras being a household object today, but today paintings can be digital and also photographs.

Photo, like painting, is in its foundation about composition, form, and tone. It’s not that different from each other, I think. They are both representational and require someone’s gaze. It serves as witness to exchange when it is done with care but people trip up at the word “gaze” itself.

It’s funny seeing all these art-world-adjacent meme accounts talk about there no longer being a need for painting and photography. It was never a need in the first place, but a desire.

♥♡♥

Like this one kid I know applied for a publishing grant and now she is reverse engineering it to build something just for the grant so it can be published by a gallery. The gallery doesn’t care enough to get to know her practice, and she is too naive to know that they don’t care about her. So I don’t think it’s fruitful. It’s art being made with the motivation of leverage and manufacture. It’s not malicious or anything, just cringe-worthy in my opinion.

I see work being made that is premeditated, thinking about how to digest the work before making it. I see this a lot in art school and it is so frustrating. And then there is this rush to make it. I don’t mean planning and research, but more so this didactic foresight and equation to make it more relevant. It feels like more and more I see this reversed way of thinking. Sometimes I catch myself in this train of thought as well. I don’t mean to say work being made in this way is bad or impersonal, but I just wish people would connect more organically with the things they are making. It’s just stifling to experience something so controlled and instructive.

This isn’t to say go off and make offensive work or to stop making, like with any community there is a mutual respect that should exist. But I think we keep hiding behind checkboxes and rituals and institutions. We keep buying into this idea of the “art world” when what we really are talking about is the art economy.

My university hosts this art sale every year that lets students, alumni, and faculty sell work. 50% goes to the artist and 50% goes to fund the school’s scholarships. It’s a fine thing, but then the way they conduct it deters me from ever wanting to participate. It’s the school’s biggest event, so naturally, they want a lot of students to participate and these young kids come into art school and immediately have their work go through this evaluation as a monetary asset for collectors.

I thought about selling some of my paintings this year since I needed the money, but then the director of the art sale sent me a personal email saying: “This year for the first time, the sale will take place virtually. This is exciting because it broadens our collector-base to an international crowd! We’re hoping to have a strong showing of student work, and as someone who is a past award recipient, we’d especially love to have you submit work!”

I am so for artists selling work and making things to sell and grants and access provided by institutions and the whole set. Money goes a long way and it’s unrealistic to not think about it. It sounds obvious, but it’s such a layered dynamic. Like we look down on this idea of “selling out” as artists but then subject ourselves to institutions that do that exact thing, all the while being thrown back into competition with other artists disguised as community building. These institutions aren’t fostering anything but money and power.

I just wish everyone wasn’t so scared to talk to each other and ask questions because they genuinely are just curious. People question structures of power, as they should, but then blindly accept information when it is presented in designed infographics, not realizing that they are reinforcing neo-liberal, capitalist structures.

♥♡♥

History is in the future and it is multiple. But it seems like a lot of us live nostalgically in the past because it is comfortable but then naively project ourselves into the future. So who are we right now?

My
grandmother
used
to
tell
me
about
pre-war
Korea
and
then
I
grew
up
and
read
American
history
books
talking
about
the
Korean
War,
then
grew
up
a
little
more
and
read
papers
written
about
the
Korean
diaspora
reflecting
on
the
war.
These
stories
from
her
are
the
only
way
I
know
about
the
lost
people
and
lost
conversations
of
Korea
before
MacArthur.

My grandmother used to be a painter but all her paintings were looted or destroyed in the war and she never really painted again. So I painted her.

In a similar way, I think about Peter Hujar’s portrait of Sontag often. I think I think about Peter Hujar a lot when I’m painting and that I want to be like him. Aside from the aesthetical values, I want to make beautiful documents of people I’m close with, investigate and question the things I find beautiful and painful in the world.

Like I draw and write about my partner a lot and when I look back at older work I made of him I feel so tender like I’m reminded of this moment we shared and beyond the reminiscence, they take on such new and intimate meanings in hindsight. And really that’s all it is for me. All of this obsession and desire to “make work” is because I deeply love and care for the people I keep close to me. And because I want to keep being close to them.

I
can
only
wish
that
my
own
version
of
history
is
dizzy
with
dialogues.

♥♡♥

Today the clouds were pink and I cried. Sometimes I wonder if I can ever feel a new feeling, but then I have moments like today where I can cry looking over the sunset over New England at 4 pm and I want to keep that moment forever, for myself. Or keep it to share this very pretty catharsis with my partner over dinner. Or to write about it.

And
maybe
I’m
the
naive
one
and
too
empathetic.

Last night, this man died in front of my building and there were police cars and hazmat suits on my street for hours. They say it was a houseless person and I tried to search the news to find out what happened but this person’s death didn’t make it. Instead, I found out over one million and eight hundred thousand people and counting died from the virus alone as of today. So I started writing this thing about him.

It was a really cold day, but it almost got sunny at one point. It’s always grey in Boston this time around, but I hope the person who passed away got to see the sun peak out. Nobody can say where he is now, but I will always think of yesterday and think of him.

December 30, 2020.

Painting, writing, & drawing about...

Painting,
writing,
& drawing
about...