Ways of Seeing
Friday Bricolage
Greetings!
It’s (another) cold and sunny day here in Chicago. This is a great town for exploring on a lovely day so, last weekend, my daughter and I did just that! I hunted for red things and told Alexandra what I was doing. Pretty soon, she was helping me spot red things which made it even more fun. I have way more photos but these made the cut.
Color hunting is a fun game, especially when on foot, bus, and train! I like the awareness it can bring to the moment. It’s a selective way of seeing. This can be a good thing in an artistic practice, but problematic when we are overly-selective about what we view as a society or, worse yet, are manipulated by the media or our government.
What We Don’t See
Manipulations
In his BBC series, “Ways of Seeing”, the late John Berger explored themes of erasure, selective seeing, and more. I have only watched this first episode so far, but I highly recommend it because it’s not only thought-provoking but ahead of its time.
In this episode, he outlines the way that photography changed our culture’s relationship to art, reminds us that images are often arranged to produce a result, and encourages us to be skeptical. He also showed us how children can be so much more real in the way they see things. That part is both inspiring and delightful!
The show did make me think harder not only about what I see, but also what I choose to share. I often share things that I stumble across and enjoy exploring the connective tissue of synchronicity. This is what I enjoy about bricolage. The putting-together-of-it-all.
Meteorites!
I was doing a collage recently and ran across a fascinating article in National Geographic about meteorites. Despite the fact that writing about meteorites goes even farther back than the Romans, prior to the late 1700s nobody thought of them as something that needed explanation so scientists didn’t believe in meteorites until 1803 when the l’Aigle meteorite fall involved more than 3,000 pieces of rock and numerous witnesses.
The basic idea is that they had to see it with their own eyes before they would believe it. The article linked above is almost comedic from this vantage point. The reason I bring it up, however, is to point out that things can exist without our seeing them. Sometimes we don’t want to see. Sometimes we won’t believe people. Sometimes, we cling to methods or ideologies that prevent us from seeing more fully. I see this as in invitation, personally. An invitation to open and to choose curiosity over judgement.
Mondes
I create art and ask questions because of how much I see or sense both what is known or unknown. Creating and sharing something every day in October has been a powerful way for me to work on my own way of seeing and my own personal transformation. Here’s one of my daily creations, “Mondes”.
Inspirations
Julie Mehretu
I love that artist Julie Mehretu is donating $2.25 million to help the new “Free 25 and Under” program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She had this to say and I couldn’t agree more.
“You can’t have any conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion without providing access,” said Mehretu. “I did not have access to contemporary art museums as a young adult, and when I moved to New York, I was waiting tables—it was hard to access contemporary art and culture, as it’s hard for so many grad students and young people. If you really want to push the discourse and evolve the discourse, many more people need to have access to be able to participate, and this program is a step in the right direction—and we need more.”
Gisele Pelicot
I said last week that my current hero is Gisele Pelicot, the French woman who suffered the horror of her husband drugging her and allowing men to rape her over the course of nine years. I’m mentioning this again because she’s still my hero this week as she took the stand but also because she said this which I keep repeating in my head during this tumultuous time in our country and on our planet as I gather my own courage:
“I’m not expressing hatred or hate, but I am determined that things change in this society.”
There are protests happening in France in support of her with women lauding her courage. To this she says, “It’s not courage. It’s determination to change things. This is not just my battle, but that of all rape victims.”
This is it. So often people act like it’s “negative” or “hateful” to talk openly about difficult things in the world or in their lives. They might quote statistics to shore up their own beliefs or, let’s face it, position. I assert that it’s not negative to talk about suffering, abuse, or inequity, it’s necessary.
We can change what we can see. What we feel can heal. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the suffering of women—and especially mothers—because much of is unseen and unspoken. It’s clearly time for that to change. As Margaret Atwood said in this interview in The Paris Review:
“Men often ask me, Why are your female characters so paranoid? It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.
We need new archetypes. New forms. New stories. New myths.
Suchitra Mattai
This week, I stumbled across the artist, Suchitra Mattai who weaves new myths by telling complex stories about migration and colonialism and challenges the concept of so-called women’s work. She questions whose presence persists throughout history and who is monumentalized in culture thereby drawing attention to those who have been left out.
Textile-based art is all too often relegated to the realm of craft, rather than fine art. I love that she reclaims so much with this work! She starts from found tapestries and overhauls their European figures, darkens their skin and embellishes their clothes with floral appliqué, beads, and embroidery floss. Her work depicts people of the Caribbean and South Asia enjoying the type of leisure historically reserved for the overculture who benefitted from their labor.
Her show, Myth from Matter, is currently on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.
Hull-House
Speaking of textile arts, The Hull-House Museum continues to inspire me. I wrote about how they are “Underscoring Absence” in their current exhibit on Wednesday. I had the opportunity to visit again last weekend, see some of their stories come to life from a talented storyteller, and weave on a loom! I’ll be writing about that and more next Wednesday.
Movie Recommendation
This week’s movie recommendation is “Violette”, the life story of French writer, Violette Leduc. It’s very French. Very beautiful and very tragic. I’m recommending it because it’s an exquisitely-executed film but also because it’s an example of the truth of one woman’s life. It’s unfiltered and raw. It reminds me a bit of Au hasard Balthazar, the masterpiece by Robert Bresson which is often considered one of the greatest films of all time (and is one of my top five).
We need more films like this. More truth. More beauty.
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All my love,
Kymberlee
PS, In Wednesday’s Deep Dive, I wrote about efforts to clean up the Chicago River. Here’s a photo of that beauty that I took yesterday.
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