RESISTANCE AND REPAIR (II)

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Part of a series. See here.

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.

This piece gleams differently in different light, as the silver woven fabric I have used shines subtly in different angles. Please ask me for a video should you wish to see the full effect that is hard to capture in photographs.

30h x 30w x 0.75d (inches); linen, silver mesh, acrylic on wood-backed canvas