Day 62: 2/3/17. The same world that made you feel so bad was the one that made you feel so good.
The 2016 presidential election results left many feeling a wave of shock and unease. Seattle-based artist Serrah Russell channeled this disquiet into 100 Days of Collage, a series of daily meditations reflecting on the past and the ambiguous future of a newly changing world.
Russell’s collages are simple, yet layered - fusing disparate images from issues of National Geographic and various fashion magazines to build a narrative that combines defeatist confusion with a glimmer of Molotov, hope, and resistance. She captions each piece with titles like "And how we have kept quiet," "This is to protect you, they said," and "The stars have died, but we won't know for years to come," – words that could serve as their own book of poems or revolutionary wall scribblings, and recall many of the cryptic passages in Margaret Atwood's classic The Handmaid's Tale. An appropriate subtitle for the project could be the novel's line of resistance: "Nolites Te Bastardes Carborundorum" ("Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down.")
Behold Serrah Russell's 100 Days of Collage. We've included her statement at the end of this post, so scroll, look and read on.
To learn more about Serrah Russell's larger practice, read this interview on Lenscratch.
Day 1: 12/3/16. I am so very sorry.
Day 2: 12/4/16. Being taught you are never enough
Day 3: 12/5/16. When it all felt like the grief of a widow and the entrapment of a car crash
Day 4: 12/6/16. I thought we were better than this.
Day 5: 12/7/16. This is to protect you, they said.
Day 6: 12/8/16 I gave you an olive branch that you refused to take.
Day 7: 12/9/16. Dark matter days
Day 8: 12/10/16. Released into knots
Day 9: 12/11/16. Finding the way home after a landslide
Day 10: 12/12/16. Awake or asleep, it's too difficult to tell.
Day 11: 12/13/16. How close can we get?
Day 12: 12/14/16. Just fly me to the moon already.
Day 13: 12/15/16. The land in protest.
Day 14: 12/16/16. We told you to speak and then hated what was said.
Day 15: 12/17/16. Struggling for breath, he said 'I would do it all over again.'
Day 16: 12/18/16. When one of us drowns, we all are carried away. (source photo by Joe Marquette)
Day 17: 12/19/16. Broken fruit
Day 18: 12/20/16. The reality looked like a staged photo warning for the future we hoped would never come.
Day 19: 12/21/16. Can we become softer and harder again?
Day 20: 12/22/16. Ignoring the warning signs
Day 21: 12/23/2016. We are plaster casts and oyster shells. What's the difference?
Day 22: 12/24/2016. And from afar, there shown a great light. / We will keep on burning together.
Day 23: 12/25/16. Her heart was expanding but there were parts of her that could not be changed.
Day 24: 12/26/16. We are found in the places that are hardest to reach.
Day 25: 12/27/16. In my dreams it still felt like it used to
Day 26: 12/29/16. The dark at the end of the tunnel.
Day 27: 12/30/16. Hoping for growth but a drought is expected
Day 28: 12/31/16. I thought we would stay like mountains but it looks like you've been changing. And maybe so have I.
Day 29: 1/1/17. Oh how we have kept quiet.
Day 30: 1/2/17: What isn't said
Day 31: 1/3/17: It was a forced eternity of silently waiting in the dark.
Day 32: 1/4/17. What really broke our hearts was that it crushed our mother's dreams.
Day 33: 1/5/17. Finding that a fading memory is for your own protection.
Day 34: 1/6/17. How to stay vigilant.
Day 35: 1/7/17. Being told that things are under control
Day 36: 1/8/17: We are in this together.
Day 37: 1/9/17. A body turned against itself/ what flesh may fail us
Day 38: 1/10/17. "I would have drowned twice to save you sinking. If I could only have covered your eyes so you wouldn't have seen the water." - Emily Dickinson
Day 39: 1/11/17. You will set it all on fire but we'll be turning the ashes into magic.
Day 40: 1/12/17. Dreams that felt more like time-travel
Day 41: 1/13/17. What rises up, what comes out.
Day 42: 1/14/17. "We have always believed that the days of our children would be better than our own." - Jimmy Carter
Day 43: 1/15/17. Heavy and continuing to hold
Day 44: 1/16/17. There's blood in the water but the world could change its heart.
Day 45: 1/17/17. A case of diamonds in the night, and you want it darker?
Day 46: 1/18/17. Love disfigured me.
Day 47: 1/19/17. What has been built can still be torn down.
Day 48: 1/20/17. Watching an explosion where there should have been a waterfall
Day 49: 1/21/17. I need you to know what hurts
Day 50: 1/22/17. Remember we are seeds.
Day 51: 1/23/17. alter the altar
Day 52: 1/24/17. You were right to be dissatisfied.
Day 53: 1/25/17. We forgot that pain happens in the specifics.
Day 54: 1/26/17. You, the gentlest of loudspeakers
Day 55: 1/27/17. Within an avalanche, you are still emboldened.
Day 56: 1/28/17. How can something so beautiful incite your anger?
Day 57: 1/29/17. Feeling like this isn't your home anymore.
Day 58: 1/30/17. You wouldn't recognize me anymore.
Day 59: 1/31/17. Nurturing softness / I want a new kind of sugar in my bones.
Day 60: 2/1/17. The imagined darkness was more about you than about the dark.
Day 61: 2/2/17. When home spits you out into the sea
Day 62: 2/3/17. The same world that made you feel so bad was the one that made you feel so good.
Day 63: 2/4/17. Our flowers may have different names but the feeling's the same.
Day 64: 2/5/17. Forming soft shields
Day 65: 2/6/17. Eyes fixed on horizon lines, rather than the incoming storm.
Day 66: 2/7/17. The call to listen
Day 67: 2/8/17. I think we both know. This is a sickness and a steamroller.
Day 68: 2/9/17. What feels like faltering is actually just a hover.
Day 69: 2/10/17. "I try not to read all the news. I imagine falling in love again." - Sierra Stinson.
Day 70: 2/11/17. What compels us, keeps us standing.
Day 71: 2/12/17. A face to call home
Day 72: 2/13/17. Even the trees are weeping.
Day 73: 2/14/17. Being vulnerable to remind yourself of your own strength.
Day 74: 2/15/17. Swallowing up the light
Day 75: 2/16/17. The rain forgot to end and now you can't remember what it was like before.
Day 76: 2/17/17. They debated over your fate but never asked for your opinion.
Day 77: 2/18/17. A taste for pleasure, I could do with a little more.
Day 78: 2/19/17. Clawing a path to somewhere good
Day 79: 2/20/17. Your body: the ocean.
Day 80: 2/21/17. Remember your roots were born out of pleasure.
Day 81: 2/22/17. We are in separate universes but the same room.
Day 82: 2/23/17. Saving face never saved us.
Day 83: 2/24/2017. How does one stay safe?
Day 84: 2/25/17. You judge the dust on their hands but you've never loved the earth like they have.
Day 85: 2/26/17. It has taken so long to untangle me from you.
Day 86: 2/27/17. You are not in love, you just like the way it sounds.
Day 87: 2/28/17. How do we escape our past? / I cried when I heard the news today.
Day 88: 3/1/17. A wasteland you can't ignore forever.
Day 89: 3/2/17. Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
Day 90: 3/3/17. We flood in like waters full of salt.
Day 91: 3/4/17. Ready to come undone
Day 92: 3/5/17. If we just pretend like it never happened.
Day 93: 3/6/17. Appropriated lands and stolen bodies in the name of progress and beauty.
Day 94: 3/7/17. It took a lifetime to see we are too late.
Day 95: 3/8/17. What a strange, strange world we live in where she can be too much and still not enough.
Day 96: 3/9/17. The harm done by innuendo
Day 97: 3/10/17. What we are in the stillness of sleepless nights.
Day 98: 3/11/17. You will never be satisfied.
Day 99: 3/12/17. The sea misbehaves and we hedge it in together.
Day 100: 3/13/17. The stars have died but we won't know for years to come.
Many things culminated to bring about this body of work. At the end of 2016, I was finally getting settled into my new home, complete with a studio all my own. I was ready to start seeing what I could make with this new space, but unsure where to begin. Then the results of the 2016 election came in. I was suddenly feeling a lot of unexpected emotions and seeking a way to process them. A friend of mine began a similar project of 100 Days of Painting around that time and it was inspiring to witness how therapeutic it felt to her process of creation and to me as a viewer. It inspired me to begin my own project. "100 Days of Collage" has been a way for me to set up a ritual of creating. I have begun to see making as an act of daily meditation, a ritual for reflection, and a place to speak. I believe that my work feels most true when it comes from a personal place, influenced by my surroundings and my experiences and during this time, I was feeling a lot and was compelled to do something. Of course, there is so much more that I can do to help and to make change besides making art, but for me, art is building the ground floor. It is a means for self-care, a way to be heard, listen and to understand. And so I began. And so I continued. I admit that there were many days that I was tired, that I was uninspired, that I felt like I had nothing to say or I was saying something no one wanted to hear. But there was never a day that I regretted spending the time, in the quiet of the night in my studio. - Serrah Russell. 3/15/2017