love love love

Artwork: Mural by @adidafallenangel at Underpressure international graffiti festival in Montreal, 2019

Great mural and words by artist @adidafallenangel:

“Honestly, I couldn't care less about Valentine's day but we all know I do care a lot about Love!
To me love is the source of all that is pure and good, the innocent and the honest, the brave and the humble. To me love is an unstoppable force, a universal machine that is packed with so much warmth and light that the sun will pale in comparison to it. Love drives me to be better, to do better, for myself, my loved ones and the world around me. Love gives me hope, it helps me get up in the morning and it fills my heart with a magnificent force that pretty much helps me breath and be present. Without Love I dont even want to exist, to be brutally honest, I believe we are love and that powerful force is part of us for eternity, to stop believing in love is to stop believing in yourself, and there is no greater pain than that. So forget about Valentine's day and embrace everyday that you are here, that you are love and will always be loved by the rest of us, for under the skin we are alike.
Keep love alive, love every day, tell it to yourself and those around you, fear not of love, hold it dearly and let it go, love will always find it's way back into your heart.”

cupid

Artwork: Banksy?? in Bristol, 2020

Cupid—kind of—and maybe a new Banksy in Bristol…

mirage

Artwork: eL Seed, Mirage, 2019

Artist eL Seed (@elseed) recently created an artwork in the city of Al Ula in north-western Saudi Arabia, Mirage. Overwhelmed by the beauty of the natural surrounds, he wanted to make something using his signature style of Arabic calligraphy that would blend with the environment, that would be almost impossible to grasp.

eL Seed relates the story that inspired it:

Artwork: eL Seed, Mirage 2019

“In the 7th century, Jameel Bin Ma'mar was famous as a lover of the lady Buthayna from a neighboring tribe. The story of their romance is that Buthayna’s people turn down Jameel’s marriage proposal because they feel Jameel’s verses praising their love have compromised her honor—merely saying that a woman loved a man was considered a blot on her honor in ancient Arab tribal society. Buthayna is forcibly married off to another man, but she and Jameel continue to be in love with each other, although they never consummate their love. Jamil continues to visit her at Wadi ‘l-Kura (Al Ula), and to complain in verse of his longing. ‘If only the prime of the youth were new and old times come back, Buthayna, should my poetry spend a night in Wadi AlQura, then I’m happy.’ These words summarize the love the poet has for this region and I chose them to shed new emphasis on it to residents as well as visitors. The poetry offers a lens through which to witness the entire landscape. The words come from within the heart of the region and are, in many ways, an ode not only to one woman, but to nature itself. Mirage acts as a metaphor for the love Jameel had for Buthayna; a love so infinite, ever longing to be reached and grasped, like a Mirage.”

It Took Me Till Now To Find You

Artwork: Addam Yekutieli, It Took Me till Now to Find You, mixed media, 2017

The Isreali/Palestinian conflict is one with such a long, fraught and complex history it’s hard to know where to begin to untangle it. Make sense of it. Have an informed position on it. That is unless it impacts on you personally. Then your very life situation becomes the pivotal point on which your perspective turns.

Isreali artist Addam Yekutieli—who also works under the pseudonym ‘Know Hope’ (@thisislimbo; www.thisislimbo.com)— has been creating work, both on the street and in exhibition spaces, that explores this terrain of a complex political and historical reality. 

His new exhibition about to open at Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv, It Took Me till Now to Find You, expands on these themes with the title coming from one of the artworks, an extract from a letter written by a Holocaust survivor to her childhood friend whose father served in the Gestapo. 

Yekutieli says: “For this exhibition I collected letters written by Palestinians and Israelis, with the aim of hearing about notions of belonging, of homeland and longing. The authors of the letters come from eclectic backgrounds and various walks of life- left wing, right wing, settlers, military objectors, religious and secular. Each letter is addressed to whichever recipient the author chose fitting. At times, the letter is open ended, and other times it is addressed to someone very specific. The letters are all handwritten on paper in an intimate and personal tone.”

From the letters he took phrases and then scratched them into the surface of replicas of the Segregation Wall that stands between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Phrases such as: “But I Also Feel”; “As If We Are”; “That Grey Area”; “I Was Proud”; “To Give In”; “Understand My Love”; “I Can Remember”; “Restored By Force”; “Your Home” and “We Only Meet So Far Away”. 

As Yekutieli states: “By taking these texts out of their original context it is unclear whom the original author is, allowing it to gain a universal and ambiguous meaning and thus broaden the participation in the political discourse.”

Another significant element is the olive tree, the roots of which are present in each artwork. Besides the olive tree’s significance to both regions, it is the notion of offering an olive branch as a gesture of reconciliation or peace that comes to mind. How in offering these highly personal and disparate narratives from both sides of the the West Bank “wall” that separates Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories, Yekutieli’s underlying project is to not only reveal the intricacies of living with this conflict, but perhaps to also bring people closer to a more insightful understanding and desire for peace. 

The emotional resonance of the artwork (evident in the original letters which are on display for the viewer to read), acts as the vehicle to further explore these complex political realities by acknowledging people’s connection through a shared humanity, finding commonalities through feelings around home, longing, love, jealousy, frustration, anger or hope. This allows the work to speak to diverse people, to create dialogue—and potentially empathy or understanding—over division. 

To create a crack in the walls that we erect to separate; to reach a hand out in support, kindness, compassion and hope. 

A Yoshitomo Nara Day

Image: Yoshitomo Nara Peace flag

Love Peace

infinitive

Image: @hurley

A poem to reflect on as the year ends. Ursula Le Guin’s Infinitive:

We make too much history.

With or without us

there will be the silence

and the rocks and the far shining.

But what we need to be

is, oh, the small talk of swallows

in the evening over

dull water under willows.

To be we need to know the river

holds the salmon and the ocean

holds the whales as lightly

as the body holds the soul

in the present tense, in the present

tense.

(from Ursula Le Guin’s collection of poems, Sixty Odd, 1999)

wish

Artwork: Millo, Wish 2019, Lecce, Italy (@_millo_)

Street artist Millo’s new mural Wish in Lecce, Italy, speaks about the beauty of connection, and the importance of working together as community. The mural is located in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic social housing neighbourhood located where one of the biggest court cases against the Mafia was held in the 1990s.

What I love is the red thread twining the two people together and its symbolism. I’ve written before on the the use of red thread particularly in Asian art, where it has potent meaning. For instance there is the Chinese folk legend, “The Red Thread of Fate”. It tells of how when children are born, invisible red threads connect them to their soul mates. Over the years, their lives become closer until they eventually find each other, overcoming social and physical divides that might otherwise separate them. This magical cord might stretch and tangle, but will never break.

In the spirit of the holidays, Millo’s mural has special resonance as hopefully a time of love, connection, empathy and peace. And despite whatever trials and uncertainty we face, of wishing the best for each other and for the coming year.  

B. brave

Artwork: Paste-up by DONK, 2013

B. brave

Paste-up by street artist DONK (@donklondon), 2013.

Whatever you’re doing. Wherever you’re at in life.

In DONK’s words: “A gentle reminder that we all need to be brave at times, and that human vulnerability is in fact a human strength.”

B. brave

baby yoda

Too cute, he is. Baby Yoda from the new Star Wars offshoot series The Mandalorian. Love the pairing of the helmeted/masked warrior with the gifted child. And this little guy is over-the-top adorable!

poems for earthlings

Artwork: Adrian Villar Rojas, Poems for Earthlings, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 2019

What will remain after the end of humanity, the end of art? What would be the last piece of art made by a human before we disappear from earth?

These deeply unsettling questions are at the heart of Argentinian artist Adrian Villar Rojas’s work. 

Rojas’s art blurs fact with fiction, delving into ideas of multiple-universes, alternative evolutionary narratives, alien perspectives, the Anthropocene, and the interrogation of art as commodity, of its questionable endurance into perpetuity through its preservation in art museums. His installations are site-specific and transient, many of the objects destined to be destroyed or to disintegrate. His practice leaves little trace of his projects around the globe, yet each installation is linked by the overarching question of art and its relevance in a civilsation that could end.  

Artwork: Adrian Villar Rojas, The Murderer of Your Heritage, Arsenale, Venice, 2011

His most recent site-specific project at the Oude Kerk (Old Church)—recognised as the oldest building and parish church in Amsterdam, located in the Wallen, or Red Light District—titled Poems for Earthlings builds on these ideas and two previous projects from 2011. 

Rojas’s installation at the Venice Biennale in 2011 was titled, The Murderer of Your Heritage. Constructed at the Artigliere in the Arsenale, huge sculptures made of clay over a framework of cement, burlap and wood, dwarfed the viewer in a tight and dramatically lit arrangement. These strange hybrid creatures, part machine, plant and fictional, were either from some other planet, or maybe they’re the future inhabitants of Earth. This colossal endeavour was taken further in a site-specific sculpture in the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris. Also titled Poems for Earthlings, the telescopic column seemed at once recognisable and otherworldly, a ruin perhaps of a future civilisation. An alien civilisation? This time-travel, time-looped sculpture was eventually destroyed after its one-month showing. 

Artwork: Adrian Villar Rojas, Poems for Earthlings, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, 2011

The sandbagged and heaped mounds at the Oude Kerk imply a bulwark against threat; a construction of primitive temples or burial sites; of temporary refuge and again, as in so many other works, the futility of preserving our human built environments and artworks indefinitely against the natural incursions of a world in crisis.    

breath/respire

Artwork: Seth Breath/Respire (2019)

Beautiful recent work by Seth (@seth_globepainter), Breath/Respire (2019) in collaboration with Maison de Production d’Art Urbain (@quai36) for the #1096 project. Mural painted in the neighborhood of Bernard de Jussieu, Versailles, France.

finally a sign of life

Something short and beautiful.

A glimpse at choreographer Antonin Rioche’s dance for the Nederlands Dans Theater’s performance Here we live and now currently at the Korzo Theatre in the Hague. It’s titled Finally a sign of life.

Soul Mate 180°

Artwork: Kristen Mosher Soul Mate 180° (The Other Side is Here), LACMA, 2019

Kristen Mosher’s art project Soul Mate 180° (The Other Side is Here) is an ongoing venture, or adventure. 

At the core of the project is the merging of two concepts. The first is the notion of a “geographic soul mate” defined as “an intimacy created by acknowledging distances” and “a relationship with the other side of earth not as a polarity or opposite but as a fluid, shifting continuum that extends within and beyond the planet”. The second is the antipodes—the opposite of where you find yourself. The word “antipodes” originates from the Latin idea of “feet against our feet”, of inhabitants on the other side of the globe. These foundational concepts shape Mosher’s project that seeks to explore points on the earth separated by 180°.

At the current iteration of her project showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mosher has created a sculptural rendering, sourced via satellite imagery and utilising 3D printing, of a specific segment of the waves of the Indian Ocean identified as the antipode of LACMA. 

Mosher states: “The strength of Soul Mate 180° rests in the tension between what can be seen and what is imagined.”

Just imagine: your feet where they stand right now, and what’s on the other side of the globe. 

Reaching the antipodes is a tumbling down the rabbit hole with its upside down logic that’s about being able to wonder what’s on the other side than truly knowing or experiencing it first-hand. Yet Mosher’s project facilitates such an imagining, a simulated reality, simply by offering a glimpse—this tunnelling to view a wave on a vast sea. 

(source: www.kristenmosher.com)

suspended bliss

Image: Kagami Smile album, Pool of Light (2019)

Thought I’d share this beautiful and electrifying track by Kagami Smile, Suspended Bliss (When I Last Hear Your Voice) from his album Pool of Light (Dream Catalogue, 2019). I discovered him through listening to the artist Object Blue, who is pretty wonderful as well. If you’re into electronica, glitch, techno, ambient, downtempo—whatever!—check this out. Feels like listening to the future.

A Yoshitomo Nara Day

Boo…

but WTF

image: @werenotreallystrangers

Just perfect. This sums up my day…and freaking FedEx had something to do with it!

your weird

Artwork: L.E.T. (@l.e.t._les.enfants.terrible)

Another fave from artist L.E.T. (@l.e.t._les.enfants.terrible)—“Your Weird Is My Perfect”.

Truth.

the more loving one

Image: @orion_deepspace; Source: @universetoday

Reading this particular stanza just choked me up (in a good way!), from W.H. Auden’s love poem to the stars and the universe, The More Loving One:

“How should we like it were the stars

to burn

With a passion for us we could

not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.”

(source: www.brainpickings.org)

magic

Artwork: WRDSMTH, LA 2019

Awesome recent paste-up by WRDSMTH in Los Angeles.

falling garden

It’s spring and the gorgeous scents of orange blossom and pittosporum, especially at night, inspired me to post this—a vivid, alchemical site-specific installation titled Falling Garden, created by Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger for the 2003 Venice Biennale at the 17th century San Staë church on the Grand Canal.

The suspended garden—including vegetation from around the world—was inspired by the possibility of mystical and miraculous experiences. Depicted in San Staë’s alter painting is the story of the miracle of the church’s patron saint, San Eustachio. During a hunt, the Imperial huntsman and army commander is converted to Christianity following an encounter with a stag bearing the crucified Christ, its antlers surrounded by a luminous halo.

The idea of the site being a place to experience such wonders was a touchstone for the artists transforming the space with a rain of vegetation and crystallized flowerbeds, as if it were the wilderness where the deer was encountered. 

A place where the extraordinary could occur.