Gay rabbits on crossed-eyed chickens and the value of art in a world on fire
A friend gave me a small wind up toy recently –– a yellow rabbit riding a large, cross-eyed chicken-adjacent bird. I played with it this morning over breakfast. “It’s not built for this environment.” The jostling little rabbit kept stalling before coffee cups and spoons and other things on the dining table, being forced to stop the only thing it was built for while still filled with potential. “Where does it belong? Where do I belong?”
I got an aura photo recently. The woman at the shop told me I’m too sensitive. I scoffed. But as I slipped into existential dread over my coffee while that gay rabbit flailed horribly out of place on a gooned-out monster bird, I had second thoughts. “Where is that little figurine of the Twin Towers? I have an idea.” And suddenly there is hope again.
I have been thinking about hope (the audacity, honey!). I don’t think it’s enough. I think it’s important though. I got a rejection email today for a meme conference I forgot I applied to. It upset me more than it should have for something I didn’t remember wanting in the first place. I wonder what my aura looked like as I despaired. “Where do I belong? Do I even have a cross-eyed bird to ride? Am I the cross-eyed bird?”
This past week there’s been a flood of arts and culture organizations across the city and the States sharing news of cancelled NEA funding. Waves of other funding cuts are here as well. Through public notes and through the grape vine, word of programs being cancelled or on pause keep trickling in. Fear-mongering as a marketing tactic rolls in too. I smile politely to myself as some organizations, the ones with vile board members and exclusive missions –– the ones I could never jostle my cross-eyed chicken through personally –– begin their fundraising frenzies. I wonder how long this trend of disparity-as-fundraising-campaign will continue before the rich are tired of pretending to care or things collapse.
Despite the murkiness of the arts, the big art fairs seem to be doing fine. I watch the upwardly mobile share photos from Frieze et al –– art as commodity, art as decor for the wealthy, art that only exists in exclusive spaces for exclusive faces. I think about messages from people starving in Gaza I receive on Instagram. I wonder if highly detailed portraiture and sculpture at $30k+ price points mean anything in a world of famine and genocide. Does a painting that will end up in a millionaire's summer home mean anything to them? Is it even a hopeful thought?
Does it matter that billionaires pay homage to the style of the working class? Does it matter that they put stolen work and ideas on a pedestal without credit to the real creators? Even if they themselves come from backgrounds historically left out of the conversation? Is the intention to join the problem (at least I got out of where I was before/I can change it from the inside/bootstraps!)? Must everything be filtered through what is best for the shareholders and the collectors and the foundations and those who say things like “well this won’t really impact MY industry”?
My heart is breaking I think. Or maybe it’s already broken. Where does the rabbit belong? In a room full of other wind up toys? In a place where someone can say “you have value because I say so and no one else can have you”? In Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, Hito Steyerl talks about how Guernica was originally placed outdoors, where the public –– the people –– could see it. The Spanish government didn’t like this, so it was removed. Art is powerful when it is visible, not when it is hidden for a select few. She talks about art storage and the schemes of rich art collectors to drive up the value of their possessions. Much of their collections sit in holding locations near airports where international law becomes murky while the work is never seen by the public again.
The days of art as a thing of hope are gone, I fear, at least in the mainstream sense. Your gallery representation will not save your soul. Having generationally wealthy artists programmed alongside you will not give you a couch to sleep on in the doomsday bunker when those with money and power are truly threatened by all that is failing. In worlds where the priority is market value and not curiosity, your art means nothing no matter how impeccable your technical abilities are in making it. Art for a room of clueless extractors, or an audience of those who just don’t get it –– will it change their minds? Is that its role?
I guess maybe it’s less of a question of where does the rabbit belong, and more how does it belong where it is? How do we make art that is meaningful for the world we are living in? Do we? Can we? Should we? Diva, I do not know.
I took a snack break and feel more hopeful. But I stand by what I said. The goon chicken and rabbit sat with me while I ate. “Maybe their role is not to belong but to inspire questions of belonging?” Maybe I need to get out of my head and take a walk in the sun. I will think on the artists who pivot to mutual aid in times of crisis to artwork that subverts the institution to institutions truly taking the gay little rabbits under their wing and shaking up what it means to value. We must remember the power of allowing people to see alternatives and spaces to think differently. If we only immerse ourself in value and risk-management, we have lost the point. If we only care about what is pretty and digestible, we will have a rude awakening sooner than we think.
Okay going to go look at birds (it’s one of the biggest migration days of the year –– go outside).
Bye!