|
Artist's Description:
Masks, most often behind some external expression the inner world is hidden, my masks are people. Their flight and appeal to nature connects them with the living world. The mask is a certain entity, and it is a woman, at least everything I write I personify with a woman... I want to show with my work that in addition to appearance, there is something internal, something that is important and needs to be preserved, that perhaps does not appear externally and can only be known through a deeper conversation. My mother bred me
In the womb of an abyss My nourishment, A healthy diet Of bits and pieces She tore off of herself And when I was birthed – Another scar on her skin – She raised me in the mandate Of the ever-evolving People. A girl, they called me, The word rising From their cold lips Like a blight, a taint, - Something to be ashamed – A child, I never was Always a girl, a girl Left on the hospital bed To unfurl And to learn the ways Of the world. Sari
Ya know what? A long, long time ago, before animals and trees were made, when the world was new, God and the devil had a big showdown. There was shouting and fighting, sometimes with swords and guns, and maybe lasers, and they kept on till God finally chased the devil out. And Mama says for a long while after the world was mostly good. But the devil wasn’t gone for real, just hiding in a million zillion places, mostly in people like robbers, or even nursery teachers, or grocery store ladies. Even the sweetest person could have him hiding in there with no one knowing, till he would slither out and do some evil, just to be a show off. Like maybe he’d say a very mean thing, or cut a girl’s face with a knife or drown a little baby in the bathtub. And God would get so so mad saying why didn’t I just kill that devil a long time ago when I had the chance? Then one day He got the idea to make Glorious Day and burn the whole world up with flaming fire so the devil could be killed for real. Reverend says not to be scared of the flaming fire coming ‘cause Mama and Mila and me are Rightly Righteous people that’s so filled up with God there’s no room for the devil to hide inside, and on Glorious Day we’ll all fly up to heaven. Only the ones that stay down here will get the skin burnt off their bones. But just to be sure, we’re gonna live in Profanity now, where every kind of devilishness is turned around to fool him. Didn’t I tell you not to take it seriously?
Didn’t I tell you to put your hands in those torn pockets sometimes? Look For something in that old raincoat’s lining For something under the rugs Under your eyelid – with lashes behind – Under the iris – as it’s cut by a paper – But Keep calm darling, keep calm – It’s a paper, not a knife; once it is wet, it never cuts – Keep calm darling, keep calm Something will be found Something before the cleavers reach the lambs’ sternum Something before two malignant breasts, on the butcher block Before blood, seeping out from a freezer bag on the kitchen table: – 700 grams of me. Adios. On the furthest edge of the coldest corner of the steppe, a herder lived in a yurt with his three
children. The herder’s wife had died years before, so it was just the four of them who huddled around the great stove in the tent’s centre, faces blackened by soot. They were bored and achy, for when the winter bit like this no-one could go outside. For days and days they had had only each other for company and tempers, which had started out thick and mellow as yak milk, were running thin. “I wish I could check on the sheep,” fretted the youngest son, who loved the outdoors and all that breathed there. “I wish I could visit my friends,” sighed the oldest son, who enjoyed the village and all who danced there. “I wish I could trade for coffee,” grumbled the herder, who as a father thrice-over was reliant on the stuff. “What good is a fire if you’ve nothing to brew on it?” The daughter of the yurt, who was also the eldest child, opened her mouth to speak - but before she could, a great flurry of snow blew down the narrow chimney and snuffed the fire right out.! By a stroke of bad luck the father’s words had been whipped up by the north wind and carried to the Fire Maiden, a goddess much revered in those wintery parts. The herder’s thoughtless words badly offended her. ‘Mother’ – the word, to me,
Has always been my other An entity quite apart from me Until I saw her In that childhood picture Gaze gleaming, smile beaming – A reflection of what I’d been – A burning light among her siblings But to reconcile that image With the present I had been looking at the wrong place – Her eyes, in my eternity, have always been dead – I just had to look into her words Splayed across my skin – It is not easy to love me…I know.
There are days when I'm a storm. I will send you winds, tears and a hurricane of love, disguised and burned. And I don’t want to beg, I don't want you to come back out of pity and see me cry. I think about everything, I don't sleep. I mask my pain with irony. It's not easy being with me… I am chaos, the tree without roots. I'll be your friend and we'll sing in the rain, I will leave ,if you are kissing memories. It's not easy...trust me, I know. But that is the way I love- to the limit, to madness, to the end… So strong. And forever. Trigger warning: mentions of assault
The first time my mother cried, I told her about the madwoman in the attic, The inherent darkness enveloping her entire existence as she got engulfed in the banality of her life. The woman who contemplated through a man’s voice, the woman whose voice screamed out the rasp crisp reality of her essence, which revolved around the madness of her simplicity, the yearning for her ‘wild’ nature. I explained how she etched the routine of her everyday life on a piece of paper, a delicate, white, thin symbol of rebelliousness that she permitted herself in secrecy. The paper which, when written upon, held the power to liberate her thoughts from the husband she was coerced into, the children she had endured the pain for. A paper, which, if discovered, would shroud her behind the attic’s darkness forever because it was forbidden to imagine she possessed a sense of self, a consciousness that didn’t stem from her husband. Yet, she wrote and as she wrote, she wept for the sons she had given birth to– the ones who would never be her own though she tore herself apart for them. She wept for the daughters, stashing away some papers behind her pillow, for she knew, one day her daughters would be where she was, confined in the attic, forbidden to cry. Mother, if it made her isolated and blue, why did she cry? I wish I had a name that looked good when it was written in blue icing on a birthday cake. The unsatisfying almost loop of the “j” The long drawn out “a” sound that everyone always tells me I say with an accent and the rushed finale of a canceled TV show that is the “k” all because of that silent “e”
I was the princess
whose blood, spurred the winds of war to Ilium, and launched a thousand ships. To my father, I was but an answer to the Gods, a piece for appeasement. To my mother, I was first a bitter question, then a bloody cry for justice; and in between the answer that came before the question I was only a daughter, Not yet Iphigenia. i impersonate your mother without even trying,
and you hate me just because. i am everything you didn’t like about the person who raised you and i grew up being formula-fed resentment towards the woman you say i resemble, so it comes as no surprise that you get to tell me all the things you couldn’t tell a dying woman- i can take it, right? [just tell it to her grave, why don’t you?] we are avoiding the dead woman weighing us down- tergiversation personified in our every conversation; and a dead martyr is puppeteering our inevitable separation. and i am already your mother reincarnated but this time, you are raising me but you are back in 1975 with the mother you are embarrassed of- fast forward to 2016 and your daughter makes the same goddamn mistakes and you are wondering what this could possibly be karma for- i know you are thinking it but i will never ask you directly, not if i know what is best for me. we are skirting around the obvious, a sort of potentially fatal waltz- one wrong move and i am impaled I think on the patriarchy
as I hang out laundry and of the week I went on strike heavily pregnant fed up with the weighted task. My husband forced then to wash hang fold repeat renamed the laundry room ‘The Magdalene’ I think of those poor women sentenced to a life of laundry with their babies taken away. The evangelists were getting louder
bending the ears of presidents but at the same time the backlash was growing They needed a sacrifice so lots were drawn and they chose Bakker he was too loud And they didn’t like his wife So they sent a temptress his way and he fell and everyone focused their eyes on him All his accumulated wealth the power of God through success through positive thinking through investing your hard earned dollars so he could spread Jim’s word disguised as His word it was all over 1.
Jess’s house was like a private hospital, clinically white and antiseptic; germfree and sanitised beyond sanity. Kate felt like a dung beetle intruding upon a basket of fresh linen. She hadn’t blitzed her own pad in nearly a month, whereas Jess cleaned her place top to bottom twice a day, religiously. Kate had instructions to leave her shoes in the porch; the first of many house rules. But at least she wasn’t obliged to remove all articles and don a hazmat suit. She proceeded into the foyer of Jess’s pearly white Persimmon home. Shimmering mirrors reflected her bedraggled presence (it’d rained on the way over), and dust-free ornaments shone with a silvery lustre. Images of relatives consecrated Jess’s magnolia walls. Everywhere she turned, yet another face grinned at her. It felt like she was being watched. “In here, Kate,” a voice called from the dining room. Jess’s husband, Chris. “We’re just plating up.” It smelt of wildfires hazy
and sun-bled. Bike chain grease decoration on unshaven legs. The summer, the river, the green and glistening. Docks of tetris'd towels cigarette shaped women. All waterproof mascara tanning oil perfume sunscreen suffered in beach bags. Mothers had hoped they’d wear it. For the wrinkles. But the girls tracked their value differently here. Sunkissed sucked stomachs in. Still learning how to love the self in every season. River’s riparian eyelashes sway. Jump off the dock and like every cruel lover, the cold swallows air from my lungs. Below shielded by the rippling surface, water weeds latched to the achilles. I’ve always thought there were monsters down here. All the floating, the billowing, silt suspended and fish-eyed. Seek a forever-friend out of me. But I’m just another drifting thing. I’ve been measuring the curve of the Earth against my thighs. A plea. Algae greets my reemergence. Garnishes chlorine-dyed hair. I am someone that Death did not choose
The waters, silenced with a warning The fruit of love, dangled before my eyes A deer caught in the headlights The sins of the father, a haunting reminder That the lies of men bring the demise of the less fortunate At Aulis, I plead to you with Heaven in your eyes And Hell in my father’s I am someone that Death did not choose I am as sacred as the holy wars you wage I am as lustrous as the blade you lay on my neck on my neck Trigger warning: character death, mild profanity, child neglect
She’s much younger than me, and that cherubic innocence clings to her plump cheeks, and I know when she giggles she does not know I hate her. The shirt she wears, whose pink leopard print pattern is joined by old spaghetti sauce stains, used to belong to me, but I feel no connection to that age. Maybe someday she’ll be 17 too and washing dishes while a sister that’s eleven years her junior sits cross-legged in front of the TV, and she’ll remember bitching about the days-old broccoli Mom told me to cook up and feel bad. Right now she’s remorseless, getting cookie crumbs all over the couch and bobbing her head to the Law and Order theme music. I’ll have to remember to change the channel to cartoons before Mom gets home. It’s anyone’s guess when Mom will roll in. She gets off work at the diner at nine, but usually stays out to do fuck all while I have to scrub broccoli bits from Lydia’s teeth and tell my friends yet again I can’t hang out tonight, I have work to do and someone has to watch Lydia, but next weekend maybe I’ll be free. Usually she comes back smelling of alcohol, or someone’s car, half the time wearing different clothes than she left in. It’s better than when she doesn’t come home alone, and I have to contend with another shifty-eyed jerk who can’t quite decide how to behave around me. I don’t have much of an income, outside of pocketing a percentage of the money Mom gives me for the necessities she can’t be bothered to buy herself, but I bought a lock for my bedroom door. Would’ve gotten one for Lydia’s too, but she always has to get up in the middle of the night to pee, and she’s not smart enough to operate machinery yet. I even have to rescue her from her own bedroom when her chunky fingers can’t get the door open. In any case, I could wake up at the quietest creak of a floorboard. That is, before I simply stopped sleeping altogether. Artist's Description:
Girl, this work is about how you can find freedom, become who you feel like you are. A girl at work becomes a bird, her friends fly next to her, who have lost their external appearance. I want to show with my work that in addition to appearance, there is something internal, something that is important and needs to be preserved, that perhaps does not appear externally and can only be known through a deeper conversation. I listen to the excavations of
the nighttime sea whilst holding someone else’s little girl close to me. She awoke looking for her own Mum, but I was the next best thing she could find. I cradle her in my lap and marvel at her tiny forearm and curled up fist. I wonder have I held my own enough like this? Tight enough? For long enough? I hope I have. the first song you memorized,
singing along, maybe snapping with the beat? Not a nursery rhyme nor lullaby and not the alphabet song. The tune you heard on the radio wormed its way into your soul so deeply, every time you hear it played, nostalgia floods your heart, a strange sense of déjà vu. Maybe you smell coconut and chlorine or even popcorn and pine trees. Memory defined by melody and love remembered within beats. |