Something ruthless

Secrets, lies, brutal motives. At times I imagine myself plotting a revenge, though for whom and for what and what that really means is hard to know. I am writing this from my parents’ house in Australia, where I return once a year, a pilgrimage into the past that always leaves me feeling childish, fragmented, unfinished. Here I am daughter. The back-and-forth stretches me thin, as though I am always out of place, never fully able to articulate who I am expected to be.

I am a puddle of thoughts and projects, unable to see clearly. I experience myself as a strange, unalive thing, glittering and fleshy, art-monstrous body of the art-woman who does not fit. Human Desire lingers in me, but it sits in my throat like an amorphous assemblage lump, unspeakable, unmovable.

I want to return to something, to glue scraps of found fabric and old paper together, to flutter my wings above the fire of approval. I want to be crude, rude, annoying, to refuse the politeness demanded of me. Planted in the strange space between wanting and not wanting, alert yet always exhausted, unsure whether what I am experiencing is ambition or resignation.

Is this depression or living? Looped meditation on art practice. Sleeping more, eating more, wanting less. How else does one move forward when everything seems to be collapsing? Always too much and never enough. The demands shift, but the outcome is the same: not winning.

I asked my Mother, what will I be……….MAMA!!!!

Signs of aging become disqualifications. Wrinkles, sagging skin, the mere fact of having lived, reasons to dismiss, to ignore, to cast aside. Why hire you? Why look at you? Better to frolic alone in a field of forgotten women.

But always, there is the work.

March back to it, awkwardly leaping towards your undying belief in yourself. Something ruthless inside me insists on going on and going in. With absolute and pure lust of making. Another flag planted, another mark made. I fantasize about giving up altogether, about deteriorating quickly, burning out at the speed of light. Instead, I keep on insisting on persisting.

For always.

My American Dream, 2025, found objects, clothing, toys, performance, sound, 30 mins. Performed at 106 Gallery, Avenue for the Arts, Grand Rapids, MI. Photos Veronica Anderson. Developed during a 2024/2025 Padnos Distinguished Artist in Residence at GVSU, Allendale, MI.