being in the right place at the right time (always): peter sutherland

"Peter Sutherland is a New York City based artist. His work employs some of the techniques of traditional documentary photography to capture the hidden beauty of ordinary objects and everyday situations." Sutherland's Website

after estrangement: the staring

I've been thinking a bout that lately: estrangement. I love that wiktionary defines estrangement as "the state of being alien", and I laugh at my old resident alien card. It looked identical to the above, except it had a picture of an eight-year-old on it.
The thought of a picture of an eight-year-old on a green card depresses me. How much time has been spent analyzing the politics of (e)(im)migration and its deep influence upon the migrant psyche. What about the eight-year-olds? The six-year-olds? Their experience of immigration is at least equally acidic: following people you trust, like when the police tell you 'come with us', ending in a place no one prepared you for, being stared at with concern by adults and with distrust by other children. It really does leave you feeling just a touch mad, not being able to perceive or interact with the world correctly. There is a Polish phrase: sam jak palec (alone like a finger). I never understood it because I thought 'jesus, but they aren't alone. There are surrounded by other fingers', and then I tried to push them together to no effect. Each finger was still alone.

Miroslaw Balka

(stands & hair)

From White Cube Gallery: "Comprising installation, sculpture and video, Miroslaw Balka’s work has a bare and elegiac quality that is underlined by the careful, minimalist placement of objects, as well as the gaps and pauses between them. Often using his own body and his studio as a template or first point of reference, Balka’s work might incorporate personal or self-referential substances such as ash, felt, salt, hair and soap. Balka’s work deals with both personal and collective memories, especially as they relate to his Catholic upbringing and the collective experience of Poland's fractured history. Through this investigation of domestic memories and public catastrophe, Balka explores how subjective traumas are translated into collective histories and vice versa. His materials are simple, everyday objects and things, but also powerfully resonant of ritual, hidden memories and the history of Nazi occupation in Poland."(photograph)