I would like to start this post with a quote by Ai Weiwei: Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.
This comes after long weeks of fretting over the fact that I'm in a rather turbulent period in my life where lots of changes happen, prohibiting me of having time to dedicate on my artistic activities, this blog included.
Not that life turned sour. In fact, I'm doing great. It's just that from time-to-time life tends to throw a bunch of mandates at me at once that absorb all my attention, creativity, time, and energy so that nothing is left to dedicate to my art studio. Not to mention that the art studio itself is under reconstruction right now.
During some calm in the eye of the storm, I started to contemplate about what it means to be an artist when you can't find time to write, paint, or compose.
And then it occurred to me: when you start to treat your art studio as an oyster treats its shell, you're not an artist anymore, but an escapist. You create a pearl around some dirt that infiltrated your shell. Artists have the obligation to turn their whole life into an artistic experience. The personal relations, their attitude in life, the house they live in, the way they earn a living, …
If the influence of an artistic activity is limited to a small crowd of wealthy art collectors who treat it as a status symbol, it becomes a meaningless activity that only contributes to the egotripping of the happy few. Ai Weiwei has put it very succinctly at the beginning of this post: when art is not lived, it's disconnected from life.
So today, I will start with renewed energy at the enormous task of throwing off my old shell to find a new place into the world that will allow me to reinvent myself.
Till then, I will remain, with some irregular intervals, yours faithfully,
Shaharee, artist in training.
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