Eva
Eva (2024) is made with charcoal and acrylic paint on a 50 x 60 cm canvas, and she is inspired by two quotes that I keep thinking about these days:
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters”, Antonio Gramsci.
And,
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing”, Arundhati Roy.
I think a lot about revolution. I have for as long as I can remember. I’ve always known that it’s coming, because it has to. Because it can’t go on the same way any longer. Change is difficult, because it means that in order for something new to be created, something has to go.
Something has to die, to be blunt. You want more authenticity? That’s cool, just kill your pride. You want more intimacy? Great, get rid of your fear of abandonment. You want to be loved and accepted just the way you are? Awesome, stop trying to change other people. You want a healthy planet that supports human life? Love that for you, and you already know what you got to do. But will you?
I have given a lot of thought to what my part in the revolution would be, what I could contribute with that would help create change. For a long time I felt hopeless and insignificant, because I didn’t really feel like I was doing anything besides being angry all the time. I struggled with the concept of anyone leading something that I think needs to be accomplished through non-hierarchical modes of movement. Then I got caught up in trying to figure out the answers to how we would carry out the changes brought on by the revolution, because I believed I had to know how to solve to the problems we obviously would face before we got started. We are taught from very early on to not critique something if we can’t provide a better option. It took me years and years and years of failing, working within the constraints of this model, to finally accept that this is not the only way. I don’t always have to come up with all the answers. It’s not on me alone to figure all of this out, and honestly, I can’t. None of us can.
None of us have all the answers. None of us can see the entire picture. None of us can claim with any credibility to know how to get us out of this fucking mess. But I believe there are some values that can help guide us. Like,
understanding that my time on this earth is as valuable as anyone else’s; and
there is no separation between me and the earth.
I don’t have all the answers to how we should or could practically organize a better world, but I do know that if I try to act in accordance with those two principles, I am in my way helping a new world into being. And that’s when I got it. What my part is.
My part is to help bring revolution from the realm of ideas into the realm of action. Like a midwife. I remembered reading Socrates, and how his method of dialogue was based on the principles of midwifery, believing that his purpose was not the creation of an idea, but to aid it over the threshold between thought and word. I began thinking of revolution the same way, understanding that it’s not up to me to create one: she already exists.
I painted this world in labour. She knows she won’t make it. She’s held on for as long as she could, protecting the new world about to be born. I added Arundhati Roy’s quote on the arms catching her as she falls through pain and fear, to remind us that another world is possible, despite all the monsters. The hands are mine, yours, and ours.
We are the midwifes of revolution.