Tissues and art and rage, honey
I make a promise to myself every winter that I will have a tissue on me at all times to avoid being without one when I need it. This year I bought eight Kleenex travel packs. They’re all in one tote bag, which I guess is better than having none. Scarcity has become excess.
I went to an estate sale today a few blocks from me. It was sad. Strangers clambering over things. Things that just sit after you die when no one is there to pick them up. We bought some of them, some things, and I am glad they have a warm home. The house must have been lived in for decades, though it seems it’s already being sold. From what I could gather online, it’s going for over a million. The things inside weren’t indicative of someone who spent millions to buy it initially though. I guess that’s New York City, baybee.
I watched antique scalpers and people looking to flip various pieces of furniture rifle through each room. A strange competition in what was once a home, full of things that meant something they never will again. I think about the people who will buy the home. Surely some upper middle class family with an art collection that someone told them to buy, people who would never have an estate sale quite like the one I went to today. The rich are parasites and scavengers, waiting for deals, waiting to take up more space. Those with money in this country seek more, always. I couldn’t stop thinking about this while we looked around. I don’t stop thinking about this most days.
I live in a neighborhood where class and wealth disparities subtly and not so subtly live side by side. A few blocks away–millionaires with single family homes, “in this house we believe” signs in their windows. The “We Are Not Going Back” signs already removed from a few weeks ago replaced with expensive festive lights. A few blocks away–people putting cans into machines to make a few dollars, probably gathered from the “love is love” brownstones not too far away. The lump in my throat that is part rage and part illness has been building all day. I am grateful I know I can blow my nose as I walk home.
I hung a wreath made of bird seed outside my bedroom window, dangling from a satellite dish that hasn’t been used in maybe 20 years. A blue jay cried from a tree across the street, but didn’t come to visit. I fell asleep watching the sun glisten on the wreath, unvisited. I tried not to be disappointed that it wasn’t an instant hit. I know these things take time. I must remind myself of this. There is no urgency, and yet there is so much of it. I slept anyway.
A few days ago I got a rejection for an artist residency almost at the exact same time the hot sauce from my falafel lunch started to catch up with me. Everything is connected if you want it to be. I’d made it to the interview process for the residency, where the head curator scoffed that I wanted to explore what I might discover through experimentation instead of having a clear idea in my head. “Well, SOMETHING has to go on the walls at the end of the day.”
I had to head to an art gallery for a screening despite the knives in my lower belly and the futile disappointment. I stood in the gallery, empty save for a few large boulders partially covered in something metallic and reflective. These were probably worth more than I will make in a few years. I spent the screening holding the rage in my throat, my disappointment and my exhaustion longing for the tissue in my coat pocket. I left early.
The more I learn of the Art World and who it serves, the less interested I am in being a part of it. I feel too deep in it already, and also too far removed from ever really being in it at the same time. I know too much and not enough.
Many lack enough arts literacy to know how vile the industry is, that the impactful pieces they love might actually be owned by vile racists and classists. That the art market is deeply tied to zionism and gentrification and disparity. It’s an exploitative place. And at the end of the day something needs to be on the wall because someone needs to buy it so someone can make some money. And it’s usually not the artist.
The art world has CEOs too, who push people down and profit and exploit. Museums and their boards house some of the worst among us–from war profiteers to banking giants to old money monsters. Artists face backlash for having spines, for being political, for using their talents and voices to speak to things beyond the market. And those with money punish the artists who say things like “Free Palestine” and “Eat the Rich,” while they poison our earth and keep us from car and profit from our labor while accumulating more and more and more.
Everything is connected if you want it to be. I hope my rage turns useful. As the light begins to return, I think of those who came before to whom we owe continuing on. Lorraine O’Grady’s useful anger and places like ABC No Rio; artists who turn to mutual aid and picket lines; those who cry at estate sales because it is a human thing; those who look at an uncertain future and say “how do we take care of each other?” and not “how do I make sure I come out on top?”
All that to say, I wish for class war this Christmas, and tissues for all who ned them.
xoxoxox
Please consider donating to my friend Mahmoud in Gaza and supporting him, his young baby, and his extended family he is responsible for as they try to survive genocide.