ART FROM THE QUARANTINE | WEEK 10 | INTO THE NEW NORMAL
SILVIA DI NATALE
SIMULACRA. My point of view about rituals. A post. An ask. A socio-personal act inside me and my house.
I started to practice a basic ritual to exercise my sense of composition and create atmospheres with all the stuff I found around my house, without buying anything. Props for aesthetics, or mood-boards, or clients deals.
I started my personal Simulacra project during this quarantine. Working with non-sense objects.
I tried to simulate some personal Simulacrum because inside me there was a kind of provocative idea, like: “The sacrosanct fetish of the day is science.”
It forced me to find beauty and evocativeness during this difficult period, surrounded by nasty news in Italy and people singing on their balconies.
It is not really religious, but in the end, it was like creating a personal temple.
ELVIS MAYNARD (PHOTO BY AARON WILLIAMS)
Into The New Normal / The End Of Art From The Quarantine
Thank you, thank you, thank you! To the artists and the audience for making AFTQ such a special project. The numbers are in. We had 72 collections of artworks, submitted by 45 different artists, organized into 10 weekly galleries. Wow. Just wow! The project ran from April 6th to June 14th 2020.
These galleries will forever live on as a time capsule of the work produced during one of the moments of greatest uncertainty in our history, and how we, as artists, responded. One aspect I’ll miss, but will do my best to carry on, was how the platform gave us a reason to write and share ideas with each other each week. For those who were never on the emails, here is the final one :
The World is reopening, and therefore this project is coming to an end. Is the world perfect? Are we in the clear? Far from it. There is so much to be done. But AFTQ set out to be a resource for artists, to help them remain productive and connected during their quarantines. In recent weeks, we featured the work of victims of another pandemic and tried our best to lift the voices and art of our black and brown peers. This week is a finale. We will keep fighting all of these fights, but as this endeavor comes to an end, we want to celebrate all of your voices.
Don't be shy. There is no room in the new normal for imposter syndrome or worrying about not being good enough. There is just this - as AFTQ tried to be - a platform that extends into the forever and offers a chance to every voice to be heard, and every nuance to be seen. As my dear friend Arina once said (RIP my beautiful friend) : "To show your audience something they've never seen before, and allow them to question all that they've ever known, that is the true power of being an artist."
So use that power. Go forth into the world and know that you hold the key to changing everything, forever. Whether it be a painting in which a little black girl will find power, or a photo in which a young gay teenager will see their truth, or maybe a poem so beautiful it makes someone want to stick around just a little bit longer.
Our societies sometimes see us artists as having chosen the easy way out. The refusal to fall in line and inhabit a cubicle for the next 50 years seems rebellious to some. But to us, it has always been the only option. You chose the arts because there was no other way. Something in you has been scratching at the surface and waiting to burst out. You have something to say. Let it out. Let us see what you see. It doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow, but at some point, use your power and inspire the future.
Xoxo,
Elvis.
www.elvismaynard.com | @elvismaynard | www.aaronkicksass.com | @aaronkicksass
