(I Am) Not in My Bed
Whitechapel Gallery, London | October 2022
Winning submission for the gallery’s inaugural Young Writer in Residence (September - December 2022)
Link to announcement post here.
The open call for the residency asked for a response to The London Open 2022, which was the compelling exhibition held at the time showcasing 46 London-based artists working across painting, sculpture, moving image, installation and performance. I enjoyed weaving together words from the artwork titles that really resonated with me, as well as traverse through my own emotional undercurrents when I experienced the show. The result was something fervently honest.
About the Submission:
“The daunting abyss of being an ‘emerging artist’ dawned on me yet again whilst experiencing The London Open 2022. After recently graduating from six years of art education in London, the pressure of surviving the art world came crashing down like a slow build of a promised wave. Sometimes living feels more like surviving; here I communicate the desire for total oblivion in the face of staying afloat – as an artist and witness to endless global crises. I reference several pieces from the exhibition that ignited this yearning for nothingness, the mundane, but also the cliché longing to be remembered even in this proposed oblivion.”
I Am (not in my bed)
I had been confronted with the word oblivion again. I felt it had probably always surrounded me, peered at me with disdain as I began to forget it. Its wily fingers had no form, but were cool to the touch. they fit the spaces between mine perfectly. but it was a clinging. I am so tired of clinging. I want to float, not stay afloat. I want to be the spaces between my fingers; no bolts, lights, motor. I want to exist on a three minute loop outside my body, give up my consciousness to certain toys, puppets, and pets in the night. station myself as translucid silicone in a delightful fashion, smile when being smiled at, sit upright to live because I have the will. I am an artist! and my head will not shatter from impact, yours or my own. I Am an Emerging Artist, and I am emerging, from every crann, glop, lug, and chape. fire and unfire me! Can’t you see the great I’d do? Appreciate me and I’ll appreciate you.. I break into song because tears would be cliché. and dear god, I would rather die to be cliché. I need to be original, the First, a hover above the chest. I need to be considered, held gingerly, placed lovingly like an ikebana flower arrangement; perfect, artificial, oblivious, free, cut, sliced, severed, slashed, picked as flowers should be. Don’t you agree? I’ll sing you to sleep, and you will be strangely comforted by the sudden unconsciousness.
This is a luxury. You work your whole life for just this – nothingness – you do everything for nothing. “I feel tired all the time,” you say, with a statement of intent. “London is a city that wears you out, that takes everything from you, that demands a lot of things from you all the time,” but in the next breath you mutter, “I have thick skin because I live in London. This strength was given to me by London,” and London takes, and London gives. This constant give and take shakes my core til my eyes glaze; over the global chants of Make Me Safe, under the insurmountable waves of widespread crisis, withdrawal, demand, justice;
served, as The Spectre of a World Which Could Be Free, which, just is, on hollow earth. We seek a second life, an alternative during the traumatic, the gloomy, the bottom of the abyss. and so I am an artist. and I am emerging. and I stay afloat so I do not get choked by too much toast in working from home, by racial and climate injustice, by the lamentable impossibility of turning back time and knowing the future. We are constantly scattered in this abstract in-between, what they call the present, the ambiguous, goddamn uncertain present, one you are constantly unwrapping to get to the next thing. and then the next. I Know What I Want. “Oh, you didn’t have to get me anything!” and that you didn’t. as the final layer shedded away, I felt it – I felt it in my flesh, data, memory.
oblivion. at last, I could release the centuries of pressure built in my fingers, they spread as if they are immortal. I pick my belly up from the dirt, brush off the fingers that have left me. Quiet, intimate moments of life, drummer boy, starfish, shave, swim back to me and I let them wash through.
I no longer need to cling on to let go. I simply float, I simply am.
I forget about the public, the world, the andromeda galaxy. being forgotten as they gaze back. I simply am.
I just hope I wake up in my bed.