“We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold out your hand in the dark?”
-Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Life, when examined in the most minute terms, is a lonely prospect. For many of us, we spend it surrounded by people – family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, acquaintances – and yet it is written again and again that in the end, we are alone. No one can tread the path precisely beside us. Our closest companions are limited to what they know of us externally, only we ourselves possess the deeper knowledge of our true hearts and minds. While this may seem an isolating concept, therein lies our deepest strength. Only we know what lies within, the depth of our own wisdom, our limits, our capacity for the very things that make us human.

 

Zeren Oruc spoke to us from Belgrade where indoor spaces reopened recently. Oruc recently completed an exhibition examining blaach culture, an ethnic minority in Serbia, focusing on the spirituality and connection with nature within the culture. For this show, in addition to photos, Oruc included an installation of peppers, a major crop in the region cultivated by the blaach people. There is another exhibition in line for the end of August working artists from a residency Oruc curated in Spain. The topic of this exhibition will be climate change within the area of Spain where the residency takes place as well as in Serbia. Artists will work with bio-materials including kombucha and mushrooms. To hear more about this and other projects, including more about the residency in Spain, listen to the complete interview.

 

Christina Mejías Gómez lives and works in Madrid, Spain where lockdown has eased and the city erupted in jubilant – if perhaps somewhat irresponsible – celebration. Gómez is working on a collaborative piece alongside a theater artist, which they have presented in Mexico. In addition, she was recently in residency in the Azores, isolated islands in the middle of the Atlantic that are an autonomous region of Portugal. There she made a number of discoveries which she is now sifting through as she moves ahead with projects. To hear more about this residency, the islands themselves (including on island that emerged and then disappeared), and other projects, listen to the complete interview.