Know When to Hold ‘Em; Know When to Fold ‘Em
This project was created as part of the Virtual Collaborative Program for Emerging Artists, co-organized by Postscript Magazine and Exit 11 Performing Arts Company. It is a three-week virtual residency pairing emerging artists in an interdisciplinary setting.
-A fragment exchange project, audience becomes artist, artist becomes audience-
In this safe space, Lillie and Fatima define and approach their vulnerabilities. It can mean something different for everyone. For Lillie, it means changing and being changed, both physically and emotionally. For Fatima, vulnerability is emotional risk, exposure, and uncertainty.
These vulnerabilities bore a poem from Lillie called The Agreeable Woman, a personal allegory about a woman who folds herself over and over again to please others and be intimate. Fatima responded with two portraits to visually interpret, and expose, the sentiments she identified in the poem.
Please take a moment with our works.
To let ourselves be seen, openly and authentically, fosters connection; Here, there are no barriers, of any nature, between artist and audience. We warmly invite you on this journey of self-exploration and interpretation, and hope you will feel comfortable enough to do the same.
Below, we offer resources for you to repurpose our creative fragments as you’d like. We have shared our vulnerabilities with each other, and with you, through our own interpretations: a Vulnerability Score, an unmarked poem, and two visual depictions created in response. The Vulnerability Score encourages exploration as you manipulate tangible art to create your own creative expressive fragments… discover your own catharsis, permanent or impermanent, ritualistic or irreverent.
Vulnerability Score
i. reproduce, sketch, copy, or mimic the artists’ fragments as you’d like. repurpose pages of your own life.
ii. feel the paper between your hands. take a moment.
iii. play. fold, rip, create lines, ignore them, cross them, white them out, colour them up. you can scratch them with a kitchen knife or stick them with honey, or stomp them beneath your feet.
iv. look at your creation. accept it as something you made exist, without judgment.
v. play again, or add a new layer to your creation. do you have anything you’d like to slip between those layers? a note, a signature, an image?
vi. what do you wish you could say, but you tie it up in a knot and leave it in your throat? what do you want to say to your past, present, or future? savour those words, and mark your creation in some way that reminds you of those sentiments.
vii. how can you soothe those thoughts and help them sleep? how can you meet them— what element or ritual might allow them to leave your body and enter the world? in water, fire, earth, air? do you wish to display them or cleanse them? make those elements as real as you can.
viii. record your journey or your method so this can serve as a guide to meeting any discomfort, the unseen, or the unsaid. repeat these steps as many times as you’d like.
ix. thank yourself. thank your emotions.
x. we thank you for your vulnerability.
Raw Resources
We have included our personal treatments and annotated Vulnerability Scores of the fragment exchange project at @fragment.exchange or #fragmentexchangeproject on instagram.
To share your journey and exchange your fragments with others in our community, you may tag or hashtag that instagram.
Lillian Snortland is a self-taught writer of fiction, poetry, and essays. She has explored themes of fantasy, surrealism, and the imaginative feminine from a young age. At Carleton College, she studied storytelling and material culture of the past—Classical Studies, French literature and media, and art history, and continues to play with a multidisciplinary perspective in her analysis today. Lillian is honored to have been asked to facilitate two panels with Amplify Arts’ Alternate Currents series; While living in Omaha, Lillian also participated and helped produce a two-episode community talk show with discussions around POC culture and media, as well as hosted two zoom sessions of a community discussion series surrounding sustainable actions and authentic rebuilding of support networks or pipelines for BIPOC artists in the Midwest. Lillian was recently accepted into the 2021 Alternate Currents Working Group with Amplify Arts. Further writing can be found at chaimihai.wordpress.com.
Fatima Al Romaithi is an emerging visual artist based in the United Arab Emirates. She graduated with a B.A. in Art and Art History and a minor in Civil Engineering from NYUAD in 2020. Al Romaithi investigates themes of vulnerability and authenticity through emotional portraits and gestures. In her practice, she has worked with a variety of mediums, including but not limited to, graphite, paint, and photography. Al Romaithi’s plans for the future include getting a MFA to be able to teach college-level art. You can find her on Instagram as t.r.art_ .