Questions About Art

Working on a new project that triangulates the google-able information about famous (late 19th and 20th century) artists. For each poem there is a quote from the artist, a reference to the title of one of their artworks and bits of straw from the makeshift nest their online bios offer up.

In other words—these are not deep dives, but I do not want them to be. I am thinking of all the ways this project that has overcome me is strangely like theater, or surveillance—but also how the digital footprint of our identities is creating small dossiers for us all. I want to interrogate that. I’m not sure if what I am doing is yet up to the task. One of my thoughts is not to use the artist’s name. In that way… I am not claiming their identity… rather I am patchworking together shards of fabric to create a cloak of de-identification. I am wearing these bits like a Halloween costume.

Such a quandary. How public we are. Like frogs.