Collective Individual Todays
Will we need a New Art for a new tomorrow?
Who will we be tomorrow, after months alone?
Will we remember our bodies beyond our own?
And what will the public become? What will we make of it?
The selection of works above, chosen from the hundreds of Housed2020 submissions since March 20, 2020, demonstrates the domestic’s ability to mirror the deepest and most complex aspects of the universal human experience through the familiar, the familial, the local, and the everyday. With the public sphere collapsed in cities and towns around the world and the mechanisms of globalization severely disrupted, we are by ourselves, left to question society, politics, the economy, and humanity from home. If we want to learn, to discuss, to celebrate, or to protest, we are instructed to do so from our shelter-in-place spots, dependent on the hardware and software, which has made the boundary between public and private so slippery. The house and the home are on our minds, as artists and citizens alike; together, these daily observations and meditations suggest a glimpse of tomorrow by reflecting our individual todays.
A decade has passed since Housed (2010), which included contributions by Catherine Opie, Penelope Umbrico, and Susan Bright. As an artist, writer, and educator, I have continued to focus on domesticity as a subject as it relates to the literal home as well as the interconnectivity of the world. The questions of Housed (2010) come full circle with Housed2020 as we look to the days ahead.
Joseph Maida, 29 April 2020
Shelter-in-place Submissions
