An artistic critique of things my roommates have left in our apartment.

A bag of perishable groceries on the kitchen floor 
A site-specific overnight exhibition staged bimonthly 

An impactful statement on capitalism, waste, and the insidious power of willful ignorance, this piece accomplishes what Adam McKay was trying to do with Don’t Look Up. From the anxiety-inducing visual of a half-gallon carton of dairy milk warming as the hours pass by to its striking interactive element—the smell of slowly-rotting fruit—the artist forces you to confront the truths we often try so hard to ignore.

One singular flip flop in the hallway 
On display for a limited run of 4 days  

It is not so much the shoe itself, but how the artist chooses to engage with it. In her choice to pass by the flip flop each day, but perpetually leave it untouched, she creates a powerful metaphor for the isolation we all sometimes feel in a city like New York—surrounded by people, yet completely on our own. Her uncanny ability to utilize one single material to represent the endlessly complex blend of emotions that comes with being a college student in the COVID-19 era leaves me waiting with bated breath to see what this artist does next.

A mostly-consumed Peet’s latte in the fridge
A permanent exhibition, installed January 2022

At first, I thought of this piece—half-empty, isolated, unmoving—as a poignant treatise on experiencing burnout at a school that prides itself on rigor. However, one of my favorite things about being an art critic is the subjectivity of it all—the piece is perpetually open to interpretation. The more I examined this one-of-a-kind, frozen-in-time narrative, I began to see a second meaning—an evocation of the brilliant literary work of another female artist. As the poet Taylor Swift once wrote,

 “everybody moved on… 

I, I stayed there

dust collected on my pinned-up hair

they expected me to find somewhere

some perspective, but I sat and stared

right where you left me

you left me no…

…oh, you left me no…

you left me no choice but to stay here forever.”

She may not have known it at the time, but she was setting the stage for this latte, a groundbreaking statement on time, memory, and the stories we leave behind.

A cell phone propped up at the entrance of the bathroom, featuring guest speaker Boyfriend On FaceTime

This genre-bending piece utilizes James Wan-esque jump scares as a metaphor for a societal horror—the practice of eminent domain. However, the piece hits is stride with an intriguing treatise on masculinity—the terror of walking into your own bathroom to shower only to come face to FaceTime with a man you’ve never met dissipates when you recognize this piece as a reclamation of a kind of masculinity that consciously rejects toxicity. The boyfriend in this piece dutifully stands guard to ensure no one enters the bathroom should his beloved want to shower, acting as both protector and provider. However, he doesn’t claim the room as his own, instead recognizing it as a uniquely feminine space in which he is only a guest. At once, this piece presents a staunch defense of its territory while placing its male subject in a non-threatening, almost subservient role—perhaps a powerful, if convoluted, statement on American militarism and our colonial conceptualizations of “manhood.”

A used mug monogrammed “D” 

The artist remains anonymous, which only brings an additional element of mystery to this already enigmatic piece—not one of us has the first or last initial “D.” A powerful feminist reclamation of phallic humor? The last remnant of an old lover? Evidence of a theft? Only the artist will ever truly know. To compound the intrigue, the dishes that once surrounded this piece were cleaned and stored away, while only this Delphic artifact remained, still stained with the remnants of the artist’s tools (hot chocolate or tea leaves? They’ve mastered the art of keeping us guessing). I’m reminded of the ancient art of divination, perhaps a wink at Emma Thompson in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a notable fan favorite in the household. Perhaps the very nature of the mug is itself an homage to earlier literary works, Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express—in bearing the inexplicable “D” initial, it makes everyone a suspect. Maybe it’s a powerful challenge to the Lockean conceptualization of “property”—in belonging to no one, ultimately, the art it produces belongs to all of us. Whatever the answer may be, this critic remains in awe of the artist’s masterful play on the mystery genre.

A Pacifist’s Lament by Artist-in-Residence, My Roommate’s Boyfriend 

This groundbreaking piece—the standout of the collection—doubles as both performance art and a permanent installation, a reminder of what’s left behind when we give up on our dreams of changing the status quo. 

In the performance element, we’re introduced to a naive, idealistic young man, ready to make meaningful change in our kitchen by eliminating the pervasive mouse regime. However, his resolve is tested when he meets one such mouse, putting an all too friendly face to the threat he’s been tasked with eradicating. What results is a thrilling race against time as our narrator—with the help of audience participation—attempts to fashion a homemade mouse trap that will simultaneously save both the kitchen and the mouse’s young life. However, as the performance nears its end, we begin to understand this seminal interaction with the mouse for what it was: a facade that exists not to humanize the mouse, but to prevent our narrator from succeeding in his effort to make change. Unable to fulfill his promise of eliminating the mice, our narrator is left in the final scene holding his makeshift “trap,” the garbled remnants of a once-noble cause, as he heartbreakingly shifts from hunger for change to disillusioned apathy. Suffice to say, the mouse prevails.

The physical piece, a torn-up slice of Colby jack cheese intricately layered atop a dustpan, sitting next to an overturned cardboard box, all on the stage of our kitchen table, expertly blends found object upcycling with a tasteful homage to the collage work of New York artists like Nancy Spero and Joseph Cornell. However, the piece is anchored by the greater message we begin to understand when the narrator exits in surrender, leaving us with only the installation and our thoughts. Our narrator’s gallant, if naive, offer to “take care of the problem” serves as a compelling metaphor for the failings of our elected leaders to live up to their campaign promises. The soul-crushing inability to meaningfully distinguish between a mid-Trump and post-Trump America is beautifully reflected back at us through the mouse’s inability to distinguish between a pre-and post-trap kitchen. Similarly, the trap itself—a seemingly disjointed collection of perishable food, trash, and household objects—is strikingly representative of the difficulties of mounting meaningful change in a system designed for someone else to win.

With a striking performance from our narrator—an intriguing blend of the Emcee from Cabaret and Linguini from Ratatouille—and an even more resilient effort from our Mouse, Timothée, this piece dares to ask us how we will react when confronted with our deepest-held prejudices, and what we will do about the mess our leaders have left behind.

Bonus: The Useful Suggestion, a spoken-word piece

“instead of going through the hassle

of asking someone to take the trash out

just because it’s their turn

and the bin is overflowing

why don’t you try

a random act of kindness

that will bring you good karma in the end?” 

This one may not have been a physical artifact per se, but as a critic who values artists doing the work of preserving oral histories and traditions, its impact was felt just as much. You may read this piece as a rejection of accountability by someone who’s lived here for 5 months and has yet to do one single chore, but I choose to see it as something deeper—a powerful indictment of the fast-paced, capitalistic nature of life at Columbia, a critical interrogation of the very concept of “women’s work,” a radical posing of the question, “what if we embraced a praxis of kindness?” 

I, for one, have never felt less kind.

Flip Flop via Bwog Archives