44. Illuminated Reliquary
July brought us not only unprecedented images of a glowing, far-flung cosmos, but also the unbearable sweat-soaking exhaustion of heatwaves.
Hello friends,
July brought us not only unprecedented images of a glowing, far-flung cosmos, but also the unbearable sweat-soaking exhaustion of heatwaves. The sun has been inescapable lately. Even with fans and air conditioning blasting, it still casts shards of light into your windows, piercing through your closed curtains to wake you up long before your alarm clock goes off. The sun leaves traces of pink where you forgot to put on sunscreen, manages to give you a headache as it bounces off glass facades and the smooth whiteness of concrete. If you’re not careful, it weighs you down with a discomfort that no amount of ice water can alleviate.
At night, the light and its residual heat takes on a new meaning. The sun’s absence is replaced by a glowing spectrum designed to encourage summertime insomnia: the harsh fluorescence of convenience stores for late night snacks, the neon hues of body-heated dance floors and packed bars, the warmth of lamplight illuminating parks and streets you might loiter or bike around, the glow radiating from homes once again alive with activity as everyone shakes off afternoon sluggishness. Long after the 4th of July holiday, our downstairs neighbors continue to set off fireworks on our block, lighting all the buildings around us up with that colorful, ephemeral electricity we come to crave once summer is over.
For this week’s newsletter, a filling-up, a warming flush against our skin, a burning that toes the line between beauty and destruction, a brightness we love and hate.
TOUCH
Last month, I decided to trek out on my lunch break to Naudline Pierre’s show, Enter the Realm, at James Cohan Gallery. Pierre’s unique style smolders with magic and divine power. Long threads of hair and beams of light entangle together, radiating off the figures she paints like tongues of flame. Are these people or angels or some other kind of fantastical creature taken from mythology? You never really know, although her depictions of alchemical transformation suggest a metamorphosis beyond our world. I could spend hours getting lost in these lush dreamscapes.
I know it’s counterintuitive to light scented candles in the summertime, but I take every opportunity I can to use this delightful match striker from Craighill. This object is so thoughtfully made, from its timeless sleek form that blends into any style of home decor to the luxurious weight of its cast iron body. I have already burned through 2 giant candles using this thing, and I’m always looking for new ways to incorporate it into my home.
I’ve been on a bit of a fiction kick lately and decided to indulge myself by finally picking up Shadow and Bone. This had been on my to-read list for a while (I’ll gladly take any opportunity to read Slavic-inspired fantasy), although seeing the Netflix adaptation last year made me expect this would be a tame read. I was, thankfully, proven wrong. Leigh Bardugo is a masterful world-builder. Her vibrant cast of characters and inventive magic system kept me hooked. I’ll try not to spoil anything here, but I love the way Bardugo uses light throughout this book, wielding it as a beacon of hope in the scars of war and as a literal force of power against darkness.
What does a sunset smell like? "Last Light" by Henry Rose is a study in that golden glow, with notes of peach, jasmine, and patchouli distilled into a smoldering, earthy fragrance. This delicate balance between musk, fruit, and florals soaks so wonderfully into your skin. When I sampled this perfume for the first time, I was struck with that nostalgic ache in my chest that usually marks the end of summer, that craving for humidity and sweat stains on your clothes as the days get harsher and colder.
LOOK
In 1956, Neo-Dada artist Tanaka Atsuko fashioned her Electric Dress, a wearable assemblage of lightbulbs and neon tubes made in the style of a kimono. Perhaps it’s early to look at a piece that vaguely resembles a Christmas tree, but I’m fascinated by Tanaka’s use of these light fixtures to explore Japan’s transformation following World War II. Tanaka was inspired by the neon of advertisements springing up across the war-ravaged country country and used Electric Dress to visually represent this national push towards consumerism. Tanaka would wear the piece on occasion—a rather dangerous feat since she risked electrocution and burns from the bulbs—embodying the precarious condition of Japan’s post-war socioeconomic recovery.
Arcangelo Sassolino transformed the Malta Pavillion into a place of steel-melting divine reckoning for this year’s Venice Biennale. Titled Diplomazija Astuta, the piece comprises of drips of liquified molten steal darting like shooting stars into pools of water below. Inspired by The beheading of St. John the Baptist, a painting by Caravaggio that can be found in Malta, Diplomazija Astuta merges holy power with technological might, rendering the strength of this material into delicate plinks of light.
When I first saw Sung Hwa Kim’s glowing works, I was reminded of the electrified silhouette from Ed Ruscha’s 1988 painting Inch By Inch. I could spend hours marveling at Kim’s ability to make these scenes practically glow on canvas. Embedded in the nocturnal settings of these pieces are touches of nostalgia, human connection that consumes Kim’s figures. Toeing the line between natural and unnatural, his titles suggest that this glow represents profound reflections about life, death, and rebirth. One of my personal favorites (pictured above) is We follow the night, looking for the light, 2022, where the blooming buds of a field could also be the dancing flickers of fireflies.
Every time my eyes get sore from staring at my laptop for too long, I’m reminded of Penelope Umbrico’s 2018 installation at the New York Public Library, Sun/Screen/Scan. Umbrico, who continues to push everyday objects and the medium of photography to its limit, created this set of prints from the screened objects we use every day: phones, computers, tablets, monitors. She then scanned them, although the scanner she used was exposed to the sun as she did so, creating this image which condenses sunlight through a chimeric layering of screens. As she notes, these are “all devices we touch, that we are intimate with, and that replace natural sun light in our lives.”
LISTEN
Mitski’s tender ballad, "Heat Lightning,” punctures and dazzles the way the squeezing your eyes shut sets off phosphenes beyond the blackness of your eyelids. This song has this heart-aching weight to it, rolling from one poetic lyric to the next like clouds coming in on a hot summer evening. Among all of the haunting melodies from Laurel Hell, this one has lingered with me the most. There is no explosiveness, no rage, just a storm brewing between her resigned repetition, singing again and again that “there’s nothing I can do / not much I can change / I give it up to you, / I surrender.”
We’re so used to electricity powering everything we do that it’s hard to imagine what life was like before this invention. Throughline’s episode about America’s power grids traces the complicated history of the utility we know today, and takes us into the bitter fights among inventors and companies to turn the lights on across the country. If you’ve gotten bombarded by high electricity bills and texts from your power company ahead of these recent blackouts, you’ll probably find this especially timely.
LICK
I finally caved to the hype and started watching The Boys. It’s been a wild, brutal ride, but Erin Moriarty’s performance as Starlight has been an absolute standout among the show’s many incredible performances. Starlight is a bright spot of optimism and determination even as The Boys careens into incredibly dark storylines. With every sinister revelation, she still holds onto her humanity and fights for herself, while the superheroes she works with operate with great cruelty. This show is not for the faint of heart (or the squeamish), but worth a watch if you can stomach it.
If you’re craving a more natural glow, I’d suggest this video by artists Friedrich van Schoor and Tarek Mawad for their project Bioluminescent Forest. The duo spent about six weeks camping and hiking around the forest of Pirmasens, Germany where they studied and filmed the local ecology. To illuminate the forest, they used projection-mapping, casting light out onto the flora, fauna, and fungi growing there and transforming the ecosystem into a dreamy space like something out of a fairytale.
I’ve never really been into video games (I lacked both the gaming systems and the patience to do so), but Journey continues to be one of the most beautiful indie games I’ve ever encountered. Set in a desert wasteland littered with relics from a vanished civilization, you play as a little hooded figure, unlocking puzzles and discovering all kinds of hidden, magical structures along your quest. The lighting in this game’s design is almost like a second character, bathing ancient temples with golden radiance and creating unforgettably beautiful landscapes for you to explore.
CLICK
Senaa Ahmad’s short story, “The Glow-in-the-Dark Girls,” has haunted me since I first read it years ago. Taking inspiration from dark history of radiation poisoning female workers, this is a dizzying tale of apocalypse seeping into skin, transforming the body into something feminine and beautiful and monstrous and wracked with sickness. I hope reading this haunts you too.
While we’re on the subject of women’s work, I thought I would share this wonderful piece by New York Historical Society curator Margaret Hofer about Clara Driscoll, one of the long-forgotten designers behind Tiffany Glass Company’s iconic lamps. While it was men in production studios who assembled the pieces, their famous iconography came directly from the creative minds of the so-called “Tiffany Girls.” This design history is absolutely fascinating, especially when you learn that Louis Comfort Tiffany guaranteed equal pay for his female employees and encouraged their growth. Although history left Driscoll uncredited for years, her talent shines through.
“Skin-Light” by Natalie Diaz is one of those poems that leaves you feeling absolutely electrified. As athletes play a game of Mesoamerican ballgame, Diaz charts their movement, tracing the dappling dance of alchemical light bouncing off their sweating skin. You can feel the force of their exertion in the heat of the game, the powerful glow striking with an air of the divine. Diaz lets these beams devour her whole: “It streams me. / A rush of scorpions— / fast-light. A lash of breath— / god-maker.”
Caity Weaver poses a simple question: “What is Glitter?” The answer, documented in a fascinating winding story for The New York Times, is more complicated and strange than you could ever imagine. Glitter has been getting pumped into so many products lately (Euphoria vibes, anyone?), yet the production of these tiny particles is less known, limited to just a couple of factories here in the U.S. I came away from this article with more knowledge about light, reflective surfaces, and varieties of commercially-produced glitter than I’ll probably ever need, and now I’ll never look at these sparkly bits of microplastic the same way again.
In honor of her recent appointment as the 24th poet laureate of the United States, I had to include a poem from Ada Limón’s book, Bright Dead Things. “Relentless,” like many of the poems in this collection, is a poem about grief, of losing someone you love and living on in the aftermath. The sun’s apparent eternity and the fleeting nature of time are interwoven with memories of a loved one’s final hours and mundane observations about the weather, banal thoughts and conversations that attempt to fill that hollowed-out space. Limón writes, “…and in the morning, despite the oppressive vacancy / of her leaving’s shadow, light comes up / over the mountains and it is and it is and it is.”