The start of a new year and the world seems to have gone mad! There is too much going on to be able to comment or make sense of everything much less understand how we can stay grounded and sane. Since October, I have been focused on finishing the work arising from my residency at La Coupole. The image above: Hector (in memorium 1961) seems be appropriate for the current times. It is my reponse to an image in the archive which showed a rat, Hector, being prepared for his trip into outer space. Something about the image has haunted me ever since. Some might think of a rat as pest, a beast, a disposible commodity to be used for experimentation and worse. Some think of people in the same way. Yet, if we think of rats as sentient beings capable of feeling emotions such as joy and pain would we be so ready to exterminate them or to send them into the void of space? For me, Hector is a symbol both of his own creaturely life which deserves to be remembered and the lives of others who, right now, are being treated no better than vermin, with no more rights or recourse to the law.
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