Original artist statement for the Midsommar Crowns show at the Bellefonte Art Museum, February 2022. A brief reflection follows!
In the 2019 horror film Midsommar, there’s a striking emotional core in which the heroine Dani’s emotional vulnerability is treated as a burden and outright annoyance by her emotionally stunted, indecisive, and indifferent boyfriend, for whom she is no longer fun or useful because of her trauma. In the same way, there are many emotions or inner states that are not acceptable or presentable to society. We want to downplay them because they are considered improper, unuseful, or just not “cool.” Female desire, for example, is a shameful subject, while childlike joy or innocence is held in contempt as naïve at the same time that it’s ostensibly admired.
In the film, Dani’s emotional neglect at the hands of her boyfriend leaves her easy prey for the cult. Similarly, a society that does not value humanity, including inconvenient emotions and “unuseful” people, is not a healthy one, and it’s easy to see how unmet needs can turn people toward unhealthy means of meeting those needs.
For the Midsommar Crowns series, I chose to explore these inner states through portraits of women, although men are certainly victims of emotional shaming. Based on the iconic image of Dani crying in her May Queen crown, each woman bears a crown of flowers and foliage with symbolic meaning taken from the language of flowers.
The exhibition was very well received, which really excited me! On the other hand, I noticed a pattern that was rather ironic but also seemed to prove the point of the show.
All of the portraits displayed in February were of uncomfortable, difficult, or negative emotions — except one. Crown of Childlike Joy portrayed the titular emotion on the face of an old woman. I included it because pure innocent joy can cause someone to be looked down upon in a cynical society. At the same time, it’s not an uncomfortable emotion. It’s very easy to face when you’re experiencing it!
Unsurprisingly, Childlike Joy was the painting everyone gravitated toward. It was sold at the opening reception and received even more inquiries after it was already sold. Meanwhile, the others received less attention, and the one that was hardest to look at — my vulnerable self-portrait — was barely commented upon.
I point this out just to show that it supports the basic idea behind my show: we have a hard time dealing with vulnerability and “difficult” emotions. We don’t want to feel them, and we don’t want to see them, which is natural. But they need to be felt, talked about, accepted, and expressed (or otherwise channeled) in order to have healthy individuals and a healthy culture.
