I Take Up Space: On Isolation and Identity
The essay I wrote for the MoMA course I took which asked me to reflect on any modern art of my choosing.
Simone Forti. Figure Bag Drawings. 2020. Acrylic and pen on grocery bags.
I chose this artwork for the sole reason that the piece was made on paper bags. I knew nothing about the artist, nothing about when or why the piece was made. I simply saw this photograph copy and immediately asked “Is that a paper bag?”
Art exemplifies the very basis of what it is to philosophize—of what it is to ask, to think, and to strive for an understanding of the human experience. And as such, to also be able to understand that there are lived experiences we share with individuals we will never pass by on the streets in our lifetime. To know, we must ask; and so, I saw the paper bags, and I strived to understand.
I found that there was one thing I was mistaken about: the piece is not made on paper bags; but rather, they are a crucial part of the artwork.
Figure Bag Drawings was created during lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Simone Forti—an artist known for her contributions to the art of dance—expressed her anxieties to The N.Y. Times during this period of isolation where movement was restricted within the increasing loneliness of one’s home. For a dancer, not being able to reconnect with the movement that can only exist in the bustling life of the city and in the quiet serenity of wind blowing through meadows takes away from their identity as individuals who feed off of stories told through movement they experience in the world around them.
The moment she dragged her limbs across the paper bags with her dried acrylic paint, she reestablished where she was in the world and made a statement that her art extends further than just the world outside. Ironically, it’s done in isolation on materials that are familiar and found inside the household. The piles of paper bags accumulated from the groceries she took home during lockdowns were her connections to the world, where she drew her movements from—the world wherein she existed and took up space as an artist.
Who we are will always be affected by the world around us, and the pandemic took away the most crucial part of living: human connection. Our identity is shaped by what transpires outside of our lives, and the pandemic put us all into a peculiar state of not knowing where you stand in the world despite only being stuck in one place at the same time. It deprived us of the need to occupy space, and to exist where life takes place.
Simone Forti reaffirms that her art can exist in isolation, and that you can find it in yourself to recall the identity you’ve built for yourself with the connections you’ve made in the world around you.