Creating from a space of ardent celebration
Freedom, love, and pleasure is our birthright—let's create art that serves as reminders of this 🌹
Bom dia from a sun drenched sitting room in Porto 🌞 it’s officially summer, officially Cancer season, and I feel in my element in the softness, sweetness, and tenderness that this time of year brings.
Cancer (my sun & moon sign!) is a cardinal sign (the initiator of the summer season), and the mother of the zodiac—which means this time is ripe for birthing visions into reality. Cancers prioritize love over all else—a necessary and strategic way of living. And yes, Cancers cry a lot, eternally moved by the humanity in all things, at home swimming in the depths of emotion.
After a season of gathering & integrating, I am ready to create again. Last week I visited the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. It is stunning beyond words. The building itself is the first work of art you experience, one that twists and curves and surprises you as you move through it.
I am in awe of Richard Serra’s work. Their exhibit, The Matter of Time, is a massive installation of 8 steel sculptures in varying shapes (a double ellipse, wavy snakes, more complex spirals) that you can walk in and around. Experiencing the exhibit represented, for me, the different ways one can experience time. Sometimes the passage of time is instant & non-existent, and you can see everything all at once (how I feel when I am connected & grounded, or on psychedelics). Sometimes it is dizzying and disorienting, and you aren’t sure where you’re headed (how I feel when I’m experiencing trauma). Sometimes it’s a familiar spiral, that leads to a familiar destination (how I feel when I am in between those states). This exhibit exemplifies what one can create from a place of imagination & exploration.
On the other end of the spectrum, as I entered a room featuring work primarily by Anselm Kiefer, I instantly felt like crying. I wasn’t sure why until I read the exhibit’s description—Kiefer works through trauma of the devastated, dismembered landscape of post-World War II Germany through his art, which is quite mythical & wondrous, as he contemplates the place of humanity within the cosmos. This exhibit exemplifies what one can create from a place of reflection & healing.
While creating art in response to trauma is extremely important, I’m currently more interested in creating art from a place of ardent celebration. The phrase “ardent celebration” is from Jean Dubuffet’s exhibit, a lifelong artist who, at the end of his life, said “fuck it”; rejected conventional decorum, classical beauty, the pretension of expertise—and created art for the sake of pure celebration. His work from this time is colorful, funky, childlike, weird, and joyous; and the exhibit left me feeling closer to my true nature.
I want to see our communities create more art from this space. I want more expressions of joy, more exploration of what’s possible, more creation rooted in love & expansion & future building. We deserve to be more than our trauma, and we deserve to dismantle the harmful idea that great art comes from the tortured artist. Freedom, spaciousness, love, pleasure, and embodiment is our birthright—let’s create more reminders of this for the people that need it most.
Happy Cancer season, friends. Casting a spell for you to romance, and be romanced, by everything that crosses your path 🌹
