echoes of resilience

Reflections on survival and renewal

So a very long time ago I entered an art competition. I forgot the specifics. But the usual goes, a theme is given, and people apply from all over the world, to participate in said competition, in order for a few judges to designate winners that get some money and get to be part of an exhibition. As I write the words, I realize how the concept bothers me. Anyway, once I did that, my e-mail got stored in the system and I received every open call to every event they organized since then. Months and years of themes and calls to action, which I ignored ever so graceful. Until now, may the Lord have mercy as I am guilty of applying to yet a 2nd event.

Although the concept bothers me - if you want to be an artist, you have your own themes you wish to explore, you don’t need others doing it for you - AND art is subjective, there is nothing anyone can say to convince me otherwise - feels repugnant to deliver all this work from so many people in order for, let’s say, 3 people to decide which one is worthy or not. What the actual fuck? But I digress.

So moving on from that, the theme they chose stuck with me. Ever since I read the first e-mail, I had resilience in my mind. Maybe because I was already thinking about parts of it. I had suffering in my mind, whether physical or that of the spirit and how people navigate through it, even cherishing it. As if that suffering somehow defines their existence and identity. I was also thinking about being stuck in a perpetual retarded routine. A routine that slowly sucks the life out of everything. Years and years of being the same rusty wheel in a huge mechanism of infinite wheels that will replace you when the rust finally stops you from spinning. And I really wondered why keep going at all. The answer is probably different from one person to another. And to be honest, I have no idea if the answer is cowardice, assimilation or resilience. Maybe it’s all of them. But I think there’s echoes of resilience in every act of defying the odds and keeping on going…with what? That’s for each to find out for themselves.

There was a choice between 3 and 6 images. I chose 6. The time was rather short and I had other unforeseen bumps in the road that kept me from exploring the work as much as I would’ve wanted. But for some reason I wanted to complete this say challenge, as the concept got stuck in my head. One image is a revisited one from an older shoot while the others are all new photos done for this particular concept.