RESISTANCE AND REPAIR (I) [sold]

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A funny thing happened while this work was in progress. A beloved rattan chair in my study decided to call it a day after 11 years of witnessing my daily life. The wood had likely been groaning for a while, the rattan seat and back had started fraying, and the folding leather arms had acquired something more than a simple crease from overuse. Over the years, I had looked for options to repair the more obvious fragilities, but had come up blank. I had even marveled at the frail weave and delicate wood that didn’t seem to give up. 

Now, after the seat has fallen out with a definitive clatter (injuring no human or dog, relax, friends), wood joints busted into two for good measure, this well loved chair is beyond repair. I plan to use some of its materials in a future piece - and as it turns out, it has also made me think of this layered work that I created recently. 

I see both resistance and repair in this piece. 

I cannot imagine Olivia Laing meant it quite as literally as my extrapolation from her words when she wrote “I don’t think art has a duty to be beautiful or uplifting, and some of the work I’m most drawn to refuses to traffic in either of those qualities. What I care about more… are the ways in which it’s concerned with resistance and repair,” in her essay collection Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. However, it does fit how I think of this piece rather neatly, and that thought always stays with me when I parse what draws me to certain art (making it, or experiencing it). 

As a duo, resistance and repair are words often used in environmental sustainability conversations or other movement building rhetoric, in my observation. For example, it’s not uncommon to see a movement to repair as part of a larger anti-consumerist philosophy. Resistance is probably always best partnered with a plan for repair, before something gives and disintegrates beyond a fix. Then again, perhaps the disintegrated fragments are worth building something else from too.

36h x 36w x 0.75d (inches); linen, molding paste, ink, acrylic on wood-backed canvas