"Hairy Naked Accomplishment"

Often society teaches us that self-worth is interconnected with productivity, yet we are not machines. I have lived the majority of my life as a “human locomotive”, pushing forward and neglecting my own well being for the sake of doing/being/creating “more”. Last fall I read the poem “Sunflower Sutra” by the late beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Two specific lines, have stuck with and haunted me since: “when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?”

These two simple questions became my existential questions, as never before have I had my feelings of burnout so beautifully displayed before my eyes. Just as Ginsberg raised his sunflower-stalk scepter to give his sermon to his soul, it touched my soul too. In this installation you will see my journey through this existential question reflected in two pieces of art. First a serigraph, Death and Human Locomotives chronicling the peak of burnout; where all notion of the flower is forgotten. Second, Hairy Naked Accomplishment a sculpture depicting the triumph of transcendence and perseverance from the expectations of society and self; Where the flower seedling, despite all obstacles bursts forth in an act of resistance. This poem shifted my life perspective, and I offer it along the walls of this abandoned space in the hopes that it may resonate with you as well.

I will leave you these hopeful words of Allen Ginsberg:
“—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset”