Sky bends down and Water lifts up to keep each other breathing, and all we see is lines
No Longer Available
Completed
2021
Medium
Oil, Alkyd on panel
Dimensions
36" x 48"
Description
My work navigates the impacts of the body politic on living bodies, land, and culture. I work to contribute to an ending of violent tongues, knives and pens that cut apart land, culture, sex, and life. I work to expose oppressive ear and violence rooted in separation. My work celebrates the connection of land, water, and everything that depends on it. I weave, sew, cast, draw, sculpt, and perform tools for surviving current conditions and envisioning regenerative, intersectional, connected ways of being. The mixed materials and processes I create embody my mixed heritage; advocating for allegiance to land, water, and marginalized bodies in the face of continued state of violence and oppression. My works are containers for story, feeling, thought; images of what cannot be seen, and exercises for existence. Sky bends down and Water lifts up to keep each other breathing attempts depictions of what is impossible to see, given limitations of human sight and lifetimes. The painting is a love letter to Water, Sky and Land and a consideration of our place dependent on them.About this Artist
Merritt Johnson
Merritt Johnson’s work is rooted in care and endurance; navigating periphery, division, connection and intersection. Her multidisciplinary works are signals and signifiers; containers for thought and feeling. For two decades she has worked to expose oppressive fear and violence rooted in separation, to end the oppression of bodies, land, sex, and culture; while envisioning regenerative, intersectional, connected possibilities centered in collective dependence on, and responsibility to Land and Water. Johnson is pan-sexual cis-gender woman of mixed descent, she is not claimed by, nor a citizen of any nation from which she descends. Her practice is a synthesis of necessity: refusing binaries, refusing fractions of division and control, she embraces the impossibility of disentanglement and the intersection of peripheral experiences. Johnson’s use of multiple materials and process is an affirmation of variance and a reflection of her insistence that a multiplicity of tools (and bodies to wield them) are needed to…
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