Week 6 (May 25, 2020)
One can imagine that their New York apartment was small, and the living room or bedroom might have doubled as a work space or storage space for Lynch’s work. Another image in the collection shows Lynch in the same room as the one shown here but standing at an easel. His white shirt blends into the white curtains on the window, and his dark pants match the dark wall color. He stands as stiff and straight as the easel. Creating work from home, as are many artists now, begs the question of how Lynch found living and working in the same space. Was working from home comforting, generative, and inspiring at the same time that it might have felt constraining and isolating?
This post highlights the importance of artists’ responses to and documentation of their current moment and the ways their work acts as a lens for viewers to reflect on their own situations. Thus, as part of the Safer at Home project, I have invited four contemporary Los Angeles based artists—Ben Cuevas, MariNaomi, Brenda Zhang (Bz), and Rakeem Cunningham—to share some of their work and reflections on their practice in the time of Covid-19. Conversations with these artists will take place live online on the first four Mondays in June. Their work as well as videos of these conversations will be available in the online exhibition.
These connections between past artists and materials in the Archive and these contemporary artists not only further the dialogue between past and present but underscore the idea that an archive is always in process.