Lately #6: Looking In / Out / At
Hi there. Here to share some of the things I've been thinking about lately, mostly about looking both inwards and outwards.
I had the chance to spend some time at the Jennifer Packer exhibit at the Whitney, and I'm so glad I did. The doors of the elevator opened onto "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!)," a painting that literally stopped me in my tracks. It's washed in a chartreuse that glows and its size dwarfs the viewer, filling an entire wall. Packer based it on the photographs of Breonna Taylor's home that she saw in the media and felt connected to, but there is a hazy looseness to the image that adds to its feeling of intimacy. Like many of the paintings in this show, it felt like looking into a room made individual by the person in it, both by their presence and the small details they've imbued it with; in "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!)" it is the art on the walls and the plant that thrusts upwards, cared for and thriving. About her work and the Black people she paints, Packer has said "My inclination to paint, especially from life, is a completely political one. We belong here. We deserve to be seen and acknowledged in real time. We deserve to be heard and to be imaged with shameless generosity and accuracy."
I haven't been reading a ton of fiction lately, but I took a detour back into it with Elisa Shua Dusapin's Winter in Sokcho. It's a short book, a novella about a young French-Korean woman who works in a guesthouse at the border between North and South Korea. It is ostensibly about the main character's interactions with a French man who arrives there to work on his graphic novel, but ultimately focuses on her shifting relationship with herself. It's a slippery relationship, morphing and strengthening as she peers secretly into her guest's sketchbook; grudgingly visits with her mother, a fish seller; and observes a young woman who is recuperating from plastic surgery at the guesthouse. Somehow, as the main character gazes outwards at the barren zone that separates North and South Korea, it is clear that she is looking both in at herself and at the life that might await her elsewhere. Both in setting and ideas this is a chilly book, and it's one that lingers.
The window in my living room looks out at a huge Tree of Heaven whose leaves I watch turn and fall and bud with much interest. I've been thinking that I should take a video of my hands pulling open my curtains and submit it to Your Views, a project from the artist Gillian Wearing. It is a crowdsourced film made up of clip after clip of curtains drawn aside and the views that people from around the world look onto from their homes. It is compelling and revealing and personal and universal. Wearing began the project in 2013 and now has collected videos from almost every country in the world. If you have a few minutes, I recommend clicking through and taking a look.
As always, thank you for reading. Until next week,
S