Interstitiality. The service area in between two sections of artwork at the 9th Avenue gallery.
A central question in Gizelle’s exhibit is: what does it mean to grow up Middle Eastern here? This question speaks to a universal diasporic unease between “here” and “elsewhere,” but for those of us inscribed in Arabic script on a backdrop of Alpha Beta Charlie, the question cuts more deeply. Our very existence “here” rends us in two, like an act of betrayal.
In many ways, I relate more to Gizelle’s parents’ experience than her own. I chose to come here as an adult. My guilt is first-hand. When I visited Base Camp 2, I mentioned seeing an artist in Beirut posting Instagram stories of her neighbors’ building collapsing into her kitchen, before heading out to work. “I don’t even remember what it’s like to be that way anymore.” That way, meaning, to be “there,” to experience “that” and yet, remain – what? Strong? Sane? All words sound trite.
But I also know something of her entanglement in-between too. I’ve lived the third-culture life growing up. I recognize that unique act of translation (“It Means: God is Great”) that comes with it. First or second-generation, the threads still bind us. Not out of necessity – that imposed resilience of “over there,” having to do what you have to do, because what else is there to do? No, over here, our ties are by choice. It’s a practice. A labor of love. Everything here is designed to fray those ties, but we choose to darn and mend them every day.
And Gizelle went one step further. She pierced and pulled and traced and looped and wove them over and over and over again, as if to say: I am who I am. You cannot unravel me.
Readymade. Big Gulp and mailbox.