I just haven't felt like writing much. Even though I know staying with my parents is the best decision at the moment, I just feel very strange. I don't know where to go (yet) or what to do (yet) and my clothes don't (yet) fit into the new drawers and this seems an apt reflection of my life in general. After living out of boxes and suitcases the last few months, I was very happy to put all my clothes away and try on all my shoes (don't judge! I like my shoes) and realize I don't actually need all these things. Giving things away is all part of my moving process; cathartic and symbolic of something, no doubt. And of course, I kept more than I should have, and in a few months, I'll weed out some more items.
On my last night in Philly I went to the opening of the Zoe Strauss: Ten Years exhibit. It was a profoundly moving experience. I kept thinking about the disconnect between the subjects of the photos and the space in which they were being viewed. Strauss started out her career by exhibiting her work underneath I-95, and now she is displaying in a gallery in the Philadelphia Art Museum. Her pictures are powerful and capture pain and suffering that are not necessarily lovely or noble, but are profoundly shocking and raw.
I'm finding it hard to come up with the words to do justice to this exhibit. I had been thinking over the last few weeks, as I did my "last times" around Philly, about how Philadelphia is not clean, or beautiful: it's messy and complicated and contradictory, and that is why I love it. But I don't have to live in the ugliest sections, and I can leave and that makes me privileged. Strauss' work highlighted that conclusion. Her photos emphasize the broken, the scarred, the impoverished, the marginal. I think one of my questions, as a viewer, separated from the communities depicted in so many ways, is, what happens when suffering becomes 'art'? I don't have an answer. I want to keep thinking about it.
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