a mother is singing her baby a lullaby for the first time, a shelter cat is going home with an excited family, a kid is starting the first pages of what will be their favorite book series, a couple in a long engagement is finally having their wedding, a gardener is stepping outside to see their produce flourishing and almost ready to be picked, a father is becoming a grandfather eager to hold his new little love, a teenager is putting the keys into their first car, someone is moving on from a break up and walking past a place they used to go with their ex without feeling an ache, a patient is taking their first steps forward after a long surgery, a child is getting all giddy with anticipation for their birthday party
because life all around us is beautiful even though there is chaos and sorrow that can often overshadow it.
I don’t think any piece of art has ever emotionally affected me the way this robot arm piece has affected me. It’s called “Can’t Help Myself” and it’s a robot arm that’s programmed to clean up the fluid that’s constantly leaking out of itself, that looked like a never ending flow of blood. It has programmed dance moves to make it appear to have human gestures. And at first, it seemed happy and proud of its job, dancing around when it had visitors. But three years later, it looks tired, hopeless, and like it’s living in a never ending cycle of constantly trying to put itself back together for the entertainment of other people. And when I found out that it had finally stopped working in 2019, essentially dying, I couldn’t help but imagine the relief it must’ve felt and so I’ve been in here crying over a robot arm. 🥺 It was programmed this way, it truly couldn’t help itself. And no one ever helped him, they just watched.
In this work commissioned for the Guggenheim Museum, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu employ an industrial robot, visual-recognition sensors, and software systems to examine our increasingly automated global reality, one in which territories are controlled mechanically and the relationship between people and machines is rapidly changing. Placed behind clear acrylic walls, their robot has one specific duty, to contain a viscous, deep-red liquid within a predetermined area. When the sensors detect that the fluid has strayed too far, the arm frenetically shovels it back into place, leaving smudges on the ground and splashes on the surrounding walls.
Sun Yuan & Peng Yu are known for using dark humor to address contentious topics, and the robot’s endless, repetitive dance presents an absurd, Sisyphean view of contemporary issues surrounding migration and sovereignty. However, the bloodstain-like marks that accumulate around it evoke the violence that results from surveilling and guarding border zones. Such visceral associations call attention to the consequences of authoritarianism guided by certain political agendas that seek to draw more borders between places and cultures and to the increasing use of technology to monitor our environment.
this really is one of my favorite modern art pieces and you cannot do it justice without a video. the speed and manner in which it moves is captivating
“Every tree has a primeval version of itself beneath the earth. Beneath the earth, the venerable tree houses a “hidden tree”, made up of vital roots constantly nourished by invisible waters. From these radicles, the hidden soul of the tree pushes the energy upward, so that its truest nature, daring and wise, thrive in the open.“
(Clarissa Pinkola Estés)
This is part of my personal project "A Garden of Ladies”, which consists in a series of artworks involving women and nature. You can read more about it in this Patreon post.
Patreon subscribers can see a process gif of this painting and other wips, processes and personal thoughts. ♥
What is that terrible thing that clings to you? What terrible pain, what disgrace, what horror do you bear with you? What thing, despite not wanting it, accompanies you into this place?
Name it. Name it clearly. Then carry it and lay it at the feet of this rearing idol. Name it and put it into the fire.
The fire cannot forgive, the fire cannot make it right, the fire cannot undo what has been done. But the fire can consume anything consigned to it.
It will burn you. It will scorch your hands to claws of black glass. But that is no worse that what you have endured. That fire you passed through that made of your soul a cinder.
Give it to the fire. Again and again, if you must. Until it is all burned away. Until there is nothing but the burning core of the last coal, which has become a seed.
Here we gather, around the flames, with the smoke of our pain and wildness rising all around us, and the sparks of what we were spiraling away into an ancient dark.
Here we stand, our feet in the past, our arms in the future, sowing ourselves – past into present, present into future.
Here we sing, survivors of our own fires, voluntarily harvesting our new souls from those flames.
