On time and making it and taking a little restianka
I went to the Bronx Museum for the first time yesterday to see the Darrel Ellis show. There was a walkthrough of the exhibition with several people who knew Darrel in various capacities, each shedding light on the kind of person he was, what it meant to be an artist in the 80s/90s, and what AIDS did to the burgeoning alternative art scene of the time. Darrel Ellis died of AIDS based complications in 1992, but didn’t receive much mainstream recognition until about 2021. He was a working class Black guy from the Bronx who examined family and class and memory through photography and painting and experimental modalities between the two. Thirty years after his death, a group gathered in a major exhibition of his work and commented on his laugh and how much he was loved.
A friend and former curator of his talked about the art scene in NYC “back then”—you were a “wiz kid” if you had a solo show before you were 50. “Today? If you don’t have one by 21, you’re a has-been.” And it feels that way. The MFA machine, the explosion of the global arts market, capitalism growing more monstrous heads at unprecedented speeds: the 2023 art world feels impossible, though I know it has always felt impossible for so many of us.
I think it’s important for me to learn about how the cultural landscape of a place I am making cultural work within has changed. That place? New York City, mama. I think it’s also important to see who keeps showing up, even for those who have been lost, because of the impact they make or made, both in their work and in their way of moving through the world.
I rode the train from the Bronx back to Brooklyn. It was hot, my body hurt, and my mind starting slipping into imaginary arguments with imaginary people in power. The Reagan Administration, the Boards of major institutions, the rich collectors and those who simp for them, all of the injustices I could imagine on the 4 Train for 45 minutes in 87 degree weather.
I let it go and walked through the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. It looked like it was about to rain, but it didn’t. I was lonely. And there was some comfort in the loneliness as I thought about all of the other faggot artists this city has seen who felt alone—sometimes and/or always. I am beyond the point of romanticizing struggle, but there is sometimes camaraderie in shared experience—even with people I will never meet.
I like hearing about what artists in the city went through before now. It’s helpful, it’s a marker. There can be a lot of validation in knowing you aren’t the only one, even if kindred experiences exist across timelines. And I wonder sometimes what the common narrative will be for people looking back on these times. Will we only hear the stories of those with MFAs from Yale? Or those who had the most exclusive collectors and galleries representing them? Or inherited wealth and access to the tools of the rich? Will we hear about the working class and poor artists who had impeccable laughs? Does the world sustain these people now?
I used to think that working a full-time job would be a death sentence to my creative practice. Maybe it is. Maybe memes and the occasional newsletter and performance are all I have for you right now. I now make more money than some artists friends who arguably make more creative work than me, and I make a fourth of what some corporate people I know make who were once artists themselves. I exist somewhere in the middle, maybe. And while I try to use the experiences of those who came before me as a marker, I also know that the world we live in now is different. Pathways forward have shifted, and what we have to do to survive shifts.
I got a tarot reading as a birthday present in May. It wasn’t very good, but I am still hanging on to what I learned from it. “It’s enough to just get through all of the change that is happening right now, there is no need to make art unless it feels good.” I am paraphrasing, but whatever. It is enough to stabilize and heal and adjust. It’s okay to hang back and to plan. It’s okay to only do the things that feel really good while you can. Maybe it was a good reading.
I’m going on three years of making a meme everyday. This feels silly, but I have made it a charge of mine to do it daily. I think about that Depeche Mode song: everything counts in large amounts. Even memes. Three-thousand plus memes count for something, even if it’s just for the sheer tenacity of it all.
I felt pressure after the garden to do, to make, to figure out ways to move forward. This happens sometimes when I battle imaginary people in power: I’ll show them. I tried to stave off the impulse by actively giving myself permission to do nothing. This has to be an active decision for me; it is hard. The more I let myself exist without the pressure to produce, the more I was excited by the fleeting little ideas that popped into my heads. And I began taking notes. It was fleeting, but it was profound. And then I finally beat Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom. It felt appropriate.
I woke up today hell bent on carrying that forward. But my body hurt. After years of vaguely expressing that my body is in pain, I am finally able to pinpoint some of the source of it. I have to inject myself with a medication every two weeks, but I might start to be able to move without as much pain again. The source of the demise of a lot of my performance work might be able to be dealt with now. But I also wonder if I want to be able to use my body in the way I used to be able to. If ease is okay, if not struggling is okay, if making art when I want to on my terms is okay, then why don’t I do it?
It feels silly sometimes to say that you want to make it. I don’t know what making it in the art world today looks like in terms I would enjoy. Being surrounded by elitist art world people and collectors and monied interests would make me hate it. I try to remember that now, as there always has been, there are alternative paths. And more and more, to “make it” means something different than it used to. I would be happy if in thirty years people commented on my incredible laugh and how I made people feel. I think it is okay to not forget that as we get caught up in the illusion of needing to claw our way to the top. 
Anyway, thanks for reading as always. I am working to try to get back to a more regular writing practice, so please yell at me if you want more. ILY HAGS