Three collage shows about American horrors (and one that isn't)
How apropos for Halloween: I found three separate art exhibits that feature collage work exploring the horror shows of American prisons and politics. (Seriously, if you’re having trouble sleeping these days, you might want to avoid the following images.)
Chris Santa Maria, “PRESIDENT TRUMP”
If you want one gigantic scare, Chris Santa Maria’s enormous collage should do the job. For four years, the artist collected thousands of Trump and Trump-era-media images to make “PRESIDENT TRUMP.” His Instagram account says he’ll be adding even more to the six-by-six-feet piece during the last weekend before Election Day.
This next collage is only letter-sized, but it might as well be larger-than-life.
James “Yaya” Hough, “Untitled”
Not one, but two exhibits prominently feature collage works about the prison industrial complex. The collage above is part of “Rendering Justice” at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Curator Jesse Krimes gathered work by incarcerated artists, as well as those whose art practice focuses on the impact of prison on all of us. Krimes and four other artists in this exhibit are also showing work in “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration” at MoMA PS1 in New York.
Gilberto Rivera, “An Institutional Nightmare”
Still with me? This last exhibit has absolutely nothing to do with the previously-mentioned American nightmares: it’s not even in this country.
John Stezaker, “The Trial”
To see “The Trial” and other works in person, you’d have to go London (the one in England) to visit “At the Edge of Pictures: John Stezaker, Works 1975-1990.” As the title suggests, this is old-school artwork that’s closer to the Surrealist movement than the remixing born from hip-hop. Unsurprisingly, these works feature no references to people of color (as if there were no Black Britons before 1990), which brings me right back to the present. Worldwide protests are connecting Black and brown lives in jeopardy to the art world and election-year politics. I can’t think of anything much scarier this Halloween than this kind of oppression and exclusion.
Just. So. Tired.
I'm going to make the understatement of a lifetime: this week was hard. Because I'm all out of pretty words, I point you in the direction of poet Maggie Smith.
This poem beautifully captures the parenting dilemmas I've been wrestling with since at least 2011. (And again in 2013. And in 2014. Pretty sure I'll keep thinking about this a lot.) Meanwhile, I'll spend this weekend regrouping. Perhaps next week I'll have more for you.
Work-in-progress: engaging your ghosts
These little people don't exist anymore. Neither does the landscape where they sit.
They're not dead, of course: that's me and my brother as preschoolers. But Halloween reminds me of my fascination with stories and lives that might have been.
The little girl in these family photos was scared of almost everything: monsters, getting lost, upsetting someone or not being liked... the list was endless. Right now, I'm living through the scariest presidential election season I've ever experienced. But I've also lived long enough to know the outcome will not signal the end of the world. (Probably. I could be wrong this time.)
Halloween is supposed to be the time of year when 'the veil between worlds is at its thinnest.' I've always loved the idea of reaching other worlds, real or fictional, and I realize there may be some horrors when we get there. But I suppose I can stand some of the horrors, as long as I get the magic too.