Lessons from Having An Art Exhibition Nobody Saw
438 days of work.
120 megabytes.
24 still-framed shots of objects, isolated against a clean backdrop. Framed in space, and then left behind in the storage spaces of our homes, never to be seen again.
Maybe 10, 15 years later, while busking in nostalgia I'll stumble upon these antique objects, masked in dust with colours faded and yellowing. And maybe I'll still recall the backache, headache, and heartache of the moulding, painting, and sculpting. I'll chuckle to myself at the meanings of these objects — little inside jokes buried at the bedrock of my hippocampus and within the fibres of the canvas. I'll scoff at how poorly rendered I now think they are, and muse if the audience they never had would have thought likewise.
"Yes ma! This one can throw away already."
I tried really hard the other day to write something on the death of this era in my visual art to find closure: how i was finally moving on and would never create another body of works as such.
But i just couldn't find the words. Maybe in a poetic, bittersweet manner, the fact that the statement i made last year, "my first and last art exhibition" never came to pass proves that art would forever be a part of me, be it in my writing, my thoughts, my visual representations of ideas or my mind scape, that would never not perceive the world in metaphor and color. The very fact that i can type this out fluidly unlike my choked attempts to find 'closure' the other day is a testament to this.
In a strange way i didn't experience the hopelessness that I anticipated taking down the pieces, although they were (possibly) never to be seen again. Of course, at the back of my mind lurked the nagging thought: isolated from an exhibition space and artist's statement, these pieces are easily reduced to pretentious, not-very-pretty rubbish.
Yet my unfeeling wasn't from apathy and numbness rather a sense of contentment. This contentment was found in the catharsis of externalising my typically suppressed, non-pragmatic, idealistic, dysfunctional, sentimental, persona. While this conversation about cognitive dissonance is for another day, I guess in that moment I found my relationship with art: cliché catharsis, but a form of emancipation that keeps me alive nonetheless.
Anyway this led me to considering the function of visual art, and whether visual art fails if it is never actually visualised by the public. And thus, how the perception of the community ascertains and defines the existence of the individual. (In)visibility and individuality.
I actually do talk about this a lot, usually in the form of laments about Loud Speakers and how the noisy minority tends to be mistaken for the majority because sound indicates presence. I'm quite open about feeling invisible at times because my self-perceived 'visibility' tends to be dependent on the response of others. I guess it's attention-seeking but human nature craves affirmation.
Is it wrong? Is it forgivable because it's 'natural'? I have no idea. but i know it's not sustainable and thus have found it necessary to find contentment in my own self-awareness and own emotional response. I digress.
I say it's unsustainable because oftentimes i'm not ‘loud enough’ to create the reverberating sound wave. I'm a naturally reclusive person, and while i don't shy away from stages and the spotlight, I like having control over the switch. This control is created by fluctuating between radio silence and exclamation peaks. These moments of radio silence come with feelings of invisibility. Time for my favorite moment. Aha! Catch 22.
At this point I realise I never really digressed after all, instead accidentally reached the conclusion without the link. I guess yes, at the end of the day, the only way to break the cycle is to either relinquish control over (in)visibility or to find satisfaction away from the public eye. Of course the latter, though harder, is the more sustainable route. The pursuit for affirmation from the public is pointless and endless. This conclusion turned out more cliché than i thought. I'm thoroughly disappointed.
Anyway: therefore I strive for soft power — a quiet but influential undercurrent that drives change without breaking waves. I guess this is why I struggle to sympathise with tsunamis of loud protests and arguments. I digress once again.
I'm still learning to find myself by myself. Linking back, I guess having an 'exhibition' that few saw was a good thing because i found satisfaction in my own creation. And when the outside world disappoints, you find internal joy that nobody can ever take away.
