中间声音｜中间美术馆的朋友们：艾米丽·多切夫（Emily Docheff）

        I would first like to acknowledge how grateful I am to have been able to visit the IOAM in Beijing late in 2019. It truly felt like my first step into a career, not to mention an incredible experience filled with learning, listening and absorbing a place entirely new to me. A place that welcomed me, nurtured my interests, and introduced me to new friends. I feel lucky to have this experience when I did, knowing now the effects of the ensuing pandemic.

        In my state in the U.S., stay-at-home orders began in March. Several employees had to fight for their businesses to close in the interest of their safety. Myself, like many others, began the learning process of unemployment and financial stress. Daily life became brand new and somehow still unpredictable in our mundane state of constant waiting. My mother recalls the first time she needed to leave the house for groceries--usually my father’s job but he remained at home, immunocompromised. The fear she felt in everyone’s masked face was a new fear. One she hadn’t known or felt before, and when she returned to her car and removed her mask she recalls sobbing without knowing why.

        Recent protests in the U.S. began May 26th, the day after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old black man who was killed during an arrest after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly 8 minutes while other Minneapolis officers looked on. The news and internet exploded with footage of police brutality and ignored stories of innocent black lives lost. Other names became icons for the movement such as Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman shot multiple times while she lay sleeping in her home by police during an illegal, unannounced home-raid; and Elijah McClain, an unarmed 23-year-old black man known for playing his violin for shelter animals, was attacked by police on his walk home for fitting a suspicious description and was eventually injected with ketamine, causing him to pass away days later in the hospital, declared brain-dead from the lethal dose. And, of course, there are countless other names.[1]

         The Black Lives Matter movement has been heard in the popular news since 2014, when 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot with his hands up in my home state. Now, it thrives in the midst of a global pandemic, forcing us to look at our priorities and prompting the life-long unlearning Americans must do in order to understand centuries of the racism that built our country. However, I have never seen the kind of division I see now. The volume of voices that refuse to address their hatred grows. The leader of my country spreads this hate, using racism and misogyny as an in with a divided country. Since this June, at least 5 black trans women have been murdered in the U.S.[2] Everyday it seems some new piece of information arises to worsen our fears. What do we do with the feelings of insecurity and despair while we remain distanced? How do we prioritize completely conflicting issues? How do we show solidarity and confidence behind walls?

        As both an artist and a person, it is easy to dissolve into a cycle of fear and guilt. One thing that has been ingrained in me is that artists are meant to understand and respond to social or political change. We often look to past artists’ work as a way to connect with historical change or revolution--to visualize voices unheard or gain perspective on something we weren’t close enough to see ourselves. Thus, an intense pressure arises in the artist to not only create work about desperate times, but to fully understand them. To be able to communicate an intensely complicated and ever changing present. To think of your work outside of the sociopolitical bubble you find yourself in becomes an action shrouded in guilt. How can I make work like this while people suffer? Is what I’m doing calling attention to voices needing to be heard?

Then, of course, failure in your art becomes a failure to advocate.

The pressure involved with artistic stasis or failure during global lockdown and racial revolution leaks beyond painting and into moments of rest--knowing it is a privilege to rest at all.

        My work as a painter is extremely personal, delving into my own experiences, headspace, and dreamspaces. While it is still a cathartic and necessary action for me, I’ve decided that my kind of artwork may not be what people need to see right now. More recently, I’ve dedicated time to listen and learn from the work of black artists and writers. Lately, Lorna Simpson, Arthur Jafa, Claudia Rankine, Adrian Brandon, Keith Washington, Kerry James Marshall and Calida Rawles. Unlearning institutional racism will take an eternity of reparations, but listening to black voices is free.

         With this at the forefront of my mind, and with the COVID-19 pandemic having no foreseeable end in the U.S., I’m content in myself to say that I don’t have all the answers or even all the questions right now. I am still absorbing, thinking, and listening until we all get there together. It may be difficult to find hope when so much isolation and digital heaviness consumes our lives. Luckily, there is an incredible amount of action happening. While I still have seen my nation so divided, I have also seen outpourings of love--artwork, songs, violin vigils, powerful speeches, strong voices. Art is a powerful tool for information as much as it is for hope--something I’ve been able to enjoy once finally stepping away from myself.

Emily Docheff 07.23.2020

[1]https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/know-their-names/index.html 

[2]https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-trans-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2020