November 2022
AIRspace Projects, Marrickville
Hey Siri, can you die of a broken heart?
Chelsea Arnott, Zane Edwards, Charlie Komšić, Samuel Leighton-Dore, Parallel Park
Love is weird.
What even is it? — a feeling, a moment, an act? Care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, honesty and open communication is the more logical answer. But, I don’t know if pragmatism always applies here.
Why does it hurt so much? How can something so intangible, elusive and tender be felt so viscerally when absent? And can we die from the symptoms? Is there a cure for the brokenness or prescription medication I can take? Perhaps a bandaid?
As Pat Benatar sang in 1983, love is a battlefield. The funny thing is, there are usually no winners or losers in this war, just lots of wounds and PTSD, no matter if the breakup was a stalemate or a bloody mess. Love as a phenomenon could be thought of as parallel to seeking totality, but this suggests that our subjectivity when in love is fragmented and dislocated, and that we live in a state of displacement. And yet, we live by the ideal that the self is or can become whole by overcoming brokenness, or finding love (again). But, what are we in the in-between, once emancipated, in the emptiness and mutual loss after separation?
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Love is a splendid thing, until it’s not. Whether we fall out of love, experience unrequited love, or lose the love of our life, heartbreak is a deeply personal, yet universally felt experience. Break-ups can be awkward, painful and uncomfortable, and can make you ugly-cry as you listen to sad songs with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s choc-chip cookie dough in hand. However, break-ups can also be constitutive separations, allowing for much needed change, recentering and transformation. We often find ourselves needing to justify an end and find closure. Hey Siri, can you die of a broken heart? stems from autobiographical origins and personal experiences of the curator and artists, expressly navigating the collateral of breaking up or heartbreak in an attempt to seek solace. The works don’t explicitly index all of the experiences that went into them — heartbreak or otherwise — but can be seen as a practice of catharsis, a search for reconciliation, or coping mechanism; of coming undone and overcoming falling apart. Often relationships don’t work due to communication breakdown, which is ironically prevalent in the exhibition, with the majority of the artists using text-based works, diarist dialogues and language to respond to, reflect upon, and communicate these complex emotions.
In the age of self-diagnosis, it seems only natural that we would ask our saviour, Siri, how to heal by providing emergency aid through a webMD or Wikihow article. The ether, the cosmos of the internet, plays an interesting role post-breakup. We use dating apps to rebound, post carefully considered ‘revenge’ photos, we stalk our exes Instagram stories and check to see if they have seen yours, sometimes we break up over text (or email—yikes), we contemplate whether to unfriend on Facebook, and often co-star will determine our compatibility with a prospective partner. But, love is more complicated than an algorithm or the proclamation of AI.
As you cross the threshold into the gallery, you become part of the relationship, invited into an intimate space where the artists and curator bear their hearts and pain to you. Red light fills the space, indicative of a multitude of affinities from passion, pain, love, pleasure, an aortic feeling or perhaps it takes on the countenance of hell. Sound bleeds across the space with a computerised voice asking us ‘to let go’. Many of the interactions in the space are solo, inciting the feeling of being independent from one another. The space is underpinned with dichotomies, two parts (or people) not fitting well together. These polarities span moments of humour and seriousness, happiness and sadness, liberation and contrition.
Chelsea Arnott’s auto-biographical, yet playfully colourful paintings engage common urgency and emotional resonance by harnessing a considered visual language to grapple with the subject of heartbreak and loss connections. The works ‘I thought I felt something did u’ (2020), ‘This 1 is gonna hurt’ (2020) and ‘Don’t wanna be in this big old empty bed by myself’ (2020) are drawn from Arnott’s individual experiences, however these astute sentiments become generalised, or rather, cliched by offering no point of contact for these seemingly disparate moments, making them relatable out of context. Through text, these reactive, guttural thoughts express feelings and fears that often intrude on the brain (and heart) during and post-breakup. By labouring over these works, there is an active deliberation on the mingling of memory — Was it real? Did I feel it? Can I handle the pain of ending things? Will I be okay being all alone?
Filling the space with sonic reverberation is Zane Edward’s work ‘I pray your love is deep for me / You come to the point where you get your first glimpse of what’s beyond the doorway, realising how hard it is to cross the threshold’ (2022). The melodic, sometimes cringy instruction of the Siri-esque vocals provides guided meditation to the audience, who can choose to interact with the work in a singular experience of focused connection by sitting in front of the work, or collectively by holding presence within the space. The speaker embodies the role of a guide or
deity, corporeally activating our sensibilities through sound to conjure our memories and stir discomfort, we don’t want to linger in this state for too long. The echoing alludes to personal endurance and persistence, but it’s not to be thought of as a continuation of an open wound, but rather the root of it all and repetitive behaviours in and of relationships. Pulling the listener into a trance, it mimics a new age attitude of self-help and finding peace through avoidance by disassociating from your problems. The lily is symbolic in this work of rebirth and purification — the warding off of evil spirits — and although commonly associated with death, it instead is being used here to welcome the new rather than worship decay.
Charlie Komšić’s work ‘You made me, I made you. Now, unmade.’ (2022) was created specifically for the exhibition in response to a recent breakup. It began with a performance, where the artist channelled their emotions, moulded a humanoid mound of clay. Pushing and pulling, morphing and shaping, the artist reflects on the relationship and its consequential ebb and flows. At the root of the work is the notion that we are malleable material that can shape and be shaped, leaving impressions and traces within the surface; skin, psyche, being. A reflective monologue overlays the video where the artist ponders the inevitable changes that occur within partnerships, recalling imagined realities, and coming to terms with the past.
Samuel Leighton-Dore believes that a box of tissues could and should be a statement piece in every home. Well, it is definitely a staple in every heartbroken person’s bedroom, that’s for sure. By activating this prosaic and banal object through humour and camp aesthetics, the artist normalises the shared human experience of bodily discharge and the proliferation of tears and the running of noses when heartbroken. Referential of self-help and wellbeing culture, in particular that on social media, the artist invites you to please take a tissue and dry your tears with a smile. This buoyancy is further exemplified in the candy-coloured ceramic tiles throughout the space. These quippy phrases exude optimism, resemblant of sticky notes to self as reminders or affirmations that everything is going to be okay and we are in this together. It feels like if they could speak they would be saying - “You’re doing great sweetie!”
Formed in the early days of their relationship, Parallel Park is the collaborative practice of Holly Bates and Tay Haggarty. The duo have continued to collaborate together post-breakup to create erotically and humorously charged works that exude a sense of duality. The two works in the exhibition function as marker points within a relationship, one situated just prior to breaking up and the other afterwards. Both works turn inward and offer the audience an introspection into the artists’ romantic relationship of 5 years, navigating the grief of losing connection and adapting to metamorphic dynamics. ‘Into Another’ (2018) rests peacefully on the ground, positioned for the viewer to look down upon it, like they are looking at a tombstone in mourning. Humorous in nature, the work sees the artists stage a traditional Irish procession with friends to bury their beloved double-ended dildo. In a dichotomous exchange, beside this work is ‘Ambit’ (2021), which takes on a more sombre and reflective direction. It asks a community of sapphic ex-couples to talk through their breakup and the shift from romantic partnership to friendship, dictating feelings, moments and regrets during the time after separation.
This exhibition, much like a toxic relationship, seemed doomed at points, but I was persistent on making it work. Between writer’s block, logistical nightmares, and malfunctioning technology (three monitors not working, an iPod suddenly crashing, headphones breaking and not connecting, videos not rendering, etc.) it seemed like the exhibition was fighting with me. With so much of me infiltrated in its depths, it seemed like it was going to break up with me; or break me. But, we have somehow managed to separate amicably with minimal collateral damage.
Within Hey Siri, can you die of a broken heart? it becomes possible to treat vulnerability as a healed scar, a patch of tissue that is still sensitive in certain parts, but is mostly healed. The scar is nothing other than the visceral command to become an uninhibited individual who can efficiently manage their own human capital. And what makes that scar heal is not turning inward or isolating ourselves, but opening outward and letting others in. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars and healing viscera, of artefacts and archives, of reflections and contemplation.
It’s time to let go.