Isolation

In the Hall, 2009

James Barnor

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems

Johannes VanDerBeek’s Ruins

Yinka Shonibare MBE’s Reimagining of Dorian Gray

Ecole d'Abjéct, 2006

It takes guts to flatten complicated life into a red circle on a turquoise background, and it requires wittiness to reinvent a face using four letters as B. Wurtz has done. In his Untitled (life painting), the curvy letters of the word “life” compose the eyes, nose, and mouth of a face. When “life” transforms into facial components, the word becomes equally sensorial and philosophical: life is what you see, smell, and eat. The whimsical look of the face reveals the playfulness of life, the often profound and serious subject matter that, according to Wurtz’s rendering, is also funny and frivolous. Wurtz’s life painting would make a perfect life emoji amid such a turbulent time under lockdowns and quarantines—life goes on, and have fun.

When Mary Weatherford’s Night and Day was first installed in the Tang’s galleries, I was awestruck. The silkscreened figure—the artist in a bent-over, head-clutching pose, hair in disarray—is nearly life size. As I walked closer, the feeling of invading someone’s private grief was palpable, yet she beckoned. Floating among painterly color fields, she at once sinks into the background and emerges from it. Ultimately, she invites us in: figure and viewer, beneath a lunar sky, mourn together.

Four figures contort and integrate closely on a Twister board.
It has been one month since colleges and universities across the United States have come to a halt, yet I find myself nostalgic looking at this image.
The image is from one of the Seven Sister Schools, a community of colleges. Despite faces obscured, their intimacy remains clear. Impossible poses render the element of play central. Looking, I account my own impossible rites with my peers. The reel seems endless.
I ask: from a moment in isolation to an image of physical closeness so natural and known: how can we practice intimacy from afar?
We can do a lot when six feet becomes all too much.
On April 9, I sent a letter to my friend.
On an 8 x 11 in. sheet I placed the four by six rows in green, red, yellow, and blue.
Next, I folded the paper into segments of three. I attached a note, “left arm green”.
I drew my hand on one of the spots.
A letter in an envelope one in the same as to two bodies only a heartbeat away.

In Mary Weatherford’s Georgia, I immediately distinguished an ice cave, which speaks to my current feelings of isolation. I feel like I can transpose my movement into the cave, below the starfish. Most of my movement is gestural and plays on the creation and destruction of energetic barriers around me. The walls of the cave feel similarly malleable to the walls I create with my body because of their dreamlike texture. The darker areas remind me of a darkness that feels just behind us all as the virus seeps through communities. There is a part of my solo where I twist my upper body back and forth as though keeping an eye on the dark part of the cave behind me. The starfish is an unexpected, almost absurdist, component. It reminds me of the duality between the unpredictable and predictable nature of being quarantined. I’m excited to continue working with this painting to see how its icy, layered, confined vibes are interpreted in my dancing!

A buoy is anchored in the water, a navigational marker where otherwise there would be none. Yet Martin Kersels’s Buoy, with sounds and a flashing light to attract both ear and eye, is not a steady beacon. Energized by a motor, the sculpture shifts its weight, dancing around the floor—but, attached to the wall by an electrical cord, it moves only so far. In the uncertain times of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels like many of us are moving in this way, minimally drifting, tethered to a wall. Physically and emotionally, we can only move so far. We see family and friends through a screen or at six feet of distance, everyone untouchable, masks covering our faces, our expressions. We are tethered to ourselves, looking out. We seek a buoy, a sight in the distance that will guide us—back to ‘normal,’ if ever there was one—but also realize we are the buoys. We are still, mostly; and for one another, we can signal home and safety.