August 8th, 2021, Asian Art Museum, 1400 East Prospect Street, Seattle, Washington, from 3:00 – 5:00 p. m.
Photographs by Sunita Martini
The foremost reason for my kneeling at the Asian Art Musuem was Do-Ho-Suh’s steel cape titled Some/One. It’s a large sweeping armored cloak made of Korean military dog-tags. It rises in a stunning, shimmery arc of light and yet it is heavy like earth, all at once. A recurring theme in Suh’s work is the relationship of the individual to the larger society.
This is the 3rd museum I’ve installed my art action without authorization. Each institution has been open to my work at least for some duration. While setting up for my performance, my heart booms with excitement, and fear as I lay out my cape, put on my knee pads, and begin to kneel. It’s always a gamble, and I’m surprised that I’m not confronted earlier in the game. But there I was, delighted that I was not asked to leave.
As I’ve continued to kneel in various places, I’m learning that my story is also the story of many others. At the museum, a youngish man came to my side, and said, “My dad was a cop and now he’s gone. Good to have one less cop in the world.” His words were like a knife cutting to my past. For a very longtime, I had felt the same bitterness this man had conveyed through his words. As a young person, I was hot with anger, shame and resentment. I also wanted to forget. Badly. But grief is like an animal, it just comes, and this is what had been underneath my defiance and rage. In some ways, my journey has been predictable, but the details are what drive our stories. Maybe, sadness was underneath his bitterness too, and he felt free to express it. I got it.
In America, weeping is seen as a weakness, yet, it is the most natural expression of sadness. As I kneeled, I thought about this long path of grieving; how I’d found my way to bringing a twelve ft. cape to places on the West coast. Being from Baltimore with a military dad, I had a defiant attitude towards all forms of authority. I’d binged on liquor regularly, lost countless jobs, and was mostly a loner. Reaching out for help was not an option when you’re from the East coast, especially if you’re from working class. Defiance and anger had been a force of strength where I’d come from and, frankly, it kept me alive. It kept me going. However small, and slow I was, I stayed on the track team trying to win, mostly coming in next to last. I also created a lot of bad art in high school and college expressing my “darker self.” I’d become the epitome of the self-absorbed sulking art student, one of a few who didn’t smoke. Once, I tried seeing a psychologist in Philadelphia, but she simply took notes behind a fat oak desk. She told me I was “just fine,” even though I was weeping insanely over my inability to learn French verb conjugations. Over a long circuitous route, I would learn that defiance would backfire, and that my tears were more of a salve, dissolving the ache of anger and loneliness.
Being in a museum is much more open-hearted, warm, and nourishing than being at a police station, though even as I write this, I have found warm and open people at police stations too. Museums are sanctified places, visitors are usually slowing down, looking again and again, taking things in. There’s a desire to see beauty and some want to learn about history As I kneeled, I was surprised again by the kindness of the guards. Two had offered me water. One squatted down, asked if I needed anything, and with great geniality said, “You’ll need to leave by 5:00 o’clock, that’s the closing hour.” As visitors viewed my cape, some looked from afar, and, some came close expressing words of empathy. A few people gave me hugs even with the cloudy fear of the Delta variant in the air. Two women brought one hand towards the space between their throat and heart, and this seemed to me to be the center from which we all speak. It was like they were putting their hands on my chest. During my time at the museum, I would weep intermittently, at times with complete abandon to a profound bitter-sweetness. Grief is like an animal, it just comes and it was okay.
thank you.