Collection Artwork
Laurel Nakadate (born Austin, Texas, 1975)
January 9, 2010 [from 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears]
2011
chromogenic print on paper
image size: 37 1/8 x 49 3/4 in.
frame size: 38 3/8 x 50 7/8 x 1 1/2 in.
Gift of Tony Podesta
2020.17.9

Object Label

Is she crying?
(Breath catching.) I see tears—are they “real”?

It doesn’t matter. (I can replicate the breath/body mechanics of weeping. It is not “real.” And it is.)

Messy pile of clothespins. Sculpted into an arch. Tended. Untended.

She may be fooling me. The clothespins invite me to imagine an idle, unscripted moment.
But, perhaps she planned to arrange them all along.

(And I think of clothespins and women’s work and the work of women’s tears.)
It doesn’t matter. Breath catches. And I am more open, more vulnerable, more available to the whole of the life of an other.

—Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, Associate Professor, Theater

From the exhibition: Where Words Falter: Art and Empathy (July 9 – December 18, 2022)

Ongoing Research

Research on our collection is ongoing. If you have resources you’d like to share, please contact Associate Curator Rebecca McNamara.
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