Art makes it possible for us to say: I see you and I understand. It’s what you and I do here, saying back and forth, yes, this is how it is, it’s the same for me, I feel this too.
I spent many years describing how the world looks away from home. The ways we lose family when we come out, the alienation of being the one asian kid at the white school, of having a brain and a body that work differently, and how difference isn’t neutral in this world, it is disenfranchising, it is a script for not-belonging. I’ve thought a lot more about survival and justice than home.
I’m not sure what’s changing, but something is. I’m no longer homesick for a life I wanted when I was young. Finding home isn’t unlocking what went wrong, it’s not about it going back to reading the book under the blanket with a flashlight, however cozy/lonely our first homes were.
Now we make home out of thin air. Even here, when things are how they are. We are not naive, and still. It is our birthright to feel at home, even in *this* world.
I’m older than the adults were when I was a child. I’m younger than the oak tree. I am soft and breathing like the squirrel, prone to laughter, prone to dying.
So I made this series to tell about it. At home, even in this world is a series of 18 canvas paintings. Danielle hand built frames for each one. Every step of the process was done in our home, and we hope they bring a sense of belonging, even here, even now, to you too.
The series is releasing to patreon members in two hours, at 10AM Pacific time. If you’d like to shop the full collection you can join us now.
Access to the remaining pieces will then go out to you all tomorrow at 8AM Pacific in an email like this one.
I hope you enjoy these new paintings. I’m so grateful to be able to create within a community like the one you all make.
Brit
ps. there are a bunch of stickers with only a few left in stock. click here to have a look!
in noah gunderson's song "first defeat" he says "you discover that home/is not a person or place/but a feeling you can't get back" and i've spent years marveling over the accuracy. i feel like it fits with what you've been describing lately - you're not getting "home" back, you're creating a new one. i know for me my childhood sense of "home" was rooted in things that are no longer healthy for me, so not knowing where i am going while knowing i don't have a place to go back to has been weighing on me for years.
all this to say, i love this post and what i have seen reflected in your art lately. thank you for sharing it with us.