Art and Breath

Leaving is an act of love, of self-preservation. I can not live fragmented for the rest of my life, I need to exist in spaces where I am sacred, where my wholeness will be reflected back to me because I am tired of fracturing myself into legible and digestible pieces for passive consumption.

I am tired of being an artist. Okay, that is not entirely true, I am tired of being an artist within an institution that has not completely addressed their internalized systems of hierarchy.

Before college, art was my form of survival; I breathed through my work and felt at home in my work. And in art school, I have never felt so isolated in my practice. To my surprise, in my first year, most of my work was read as a projection of my identity; I could not make work about an object, it was always tied to being a feminist statement, a queer statement, or about my Japanese identity. My work was never neutral. When will I be allowed to simply be? Is this even possible? I am tired of being an artist in an institution.

Footnote, before we continue, it is worth saying I skew on the side of pessimism, and I sometimes smile or laugh when I am uncomfortable, and more importantly many folks at Tufts have made me feel seen when the SMFA felt suffocating. 

While I sometimes use my personal experience as a place to begin, I am never the conclusion. It is a defeating experience, saying my work is not only about my identity and being pushed to dive deeper into singular self-expression. 

I blocked out most of my first year, so I can’t walk you through a vivid affective map, but I remember when 

I dug my nails into my skin dissociating when I wore a red blazer to a critique of a video where I used red ribbon and my body. A femme professor gave me this long explanation of how my work fits into the canon of feminist art -- which I think was meant to be a compliment, yet her tone was just condescending. Have you heard of feminist art? It is often about using the body, blah, blah, blah, This piece reminds me of Yoko Ono, have you heard of her? You would love her work …  Is red your favorite color … I just noticed the ribbon and the blazer, wondering if there is a connection? 

I dug my nails into my skin dissociating when the next critique I wore black and white clothing which apparently looked like an optical illusion and both professors spent more time drawing connections between my clothes and the giant installation I had to spend months building rather than paying attention to my concept, form, research, or really anything else about my work. How I look should never be where a critique ends. 

I dug my nails into my skin dissociating when countless professors told me to choose a different material. Rather than using tyvek, a synthetic material I chose specifically thinking about the performativity of mixed-race identity, a professor suggested I use silk or rice paper, that I should choose a material that was more Japanese, and I should research the linear history of the kimono, a garment that I was not making. I was not heard. What was not said, I should essentialize my identity into a spectacle for passive consumption, choosing materials that would make my piece easily digestible, legible, and beautiful for a white viewer. 

I wish for a critique that could see me while moving beyond my identity considering what my work is doing without my physical appearance. I have never been neutral. 

I dug my nails into my skin dissociating with a smile every time I said nicely you are flattening my work, you are not listening, I was not heard, dismissed, and talked over. 

I blocked out most of my first year, so I can’t walk you through a vivid affective map because I do not want to rehearse microaggressions that cut deeper what clothes I was wearing 

I am tired of being an artist in an institution. Why have I spent so long looking for institutional validation when the institution is a system that may never invest in care work. 

I remember returning to school and my white friends asking me why I was so tired when the school year had not even started. I was tired of creating work that was not read past my identity, I was tired of being told to dive deeper and exploit my trauma, to master myself. I have never felt more foreign in my art practice. I was not looking forward to continuing this experience. I am tired of being an artist in an institution. 

I wish to move beyond the primacy of ocular knowledge, to center the sensorial realm, for feeling to be a useful analytic, where artists are doing work beyond visualizing information. What happens to unseen interiors not captured visually?

I wish to move beyond the politics of representation, to discuss the work of minoritarian artists without ever using the word identity, no more simple readings that erase nuance. 

I wish to flourish in the between, in the interstitial space that embraces non-linear narratives, entanglements, and incomplete readings.

I am tired of being an artist in an institution. I fell in love with art not because I was at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or invested in entering an exclusive, elite circle, but I needed a purpose. Repetitive hand work became a healing meditation, so I would not make a selfish permanent decision. Never an escape, art was my lifeline, a means to mend, mourn, and manifest. 

I have been breathing so long through my work. And right now I don’t entirely recognize myself without art, I am still obsessed with making, yet this is no longer the only way I know how to survive. I used to believe in arts ability to imagine worlds otherwise, and while I still think this is true, at some point, we need to escape the practice of dreaming together and start building new systems. What is the point of fantasizing about alternative worlds if the oppressive structures remain stagnant? I don’t know where I go from here. I am lost, may be leaving. I am searching for new ways to breathe.

Yes Manifesto

After Yvonne Rainer 

Intentions to center and reach towards   

Yes to wholeness 

Yes to healing

Yes to accessibility 

Yes to body and mind 

Yes to life-giving justice 

Yes to the space between 

Yes to world-making

Yes to critique 

Yes to saftey

Yes to artists as theorists 

Yes to art as the research method 

Yes to practice as theory 

Yes to embodied and sensuous knowledge 

Yes to rigorous collaboration 

Yes to centering otherwise 

Yes to decentering visual knowledge 

Yes to decentering whiteness

Yes to starting with Black and Indigenous voices

Yes to celebrate the multiplicity 

Yes to dreaming together 

Yes to building new systems 

Yes to radical flourishing 

Yes to excitement and joy

Yes to intentionally occupying space 

Yes to refusing passive consumption 

Yes to thinking alongside 

Yes to collective community care