50. New Year, New Reliquary

I always like to start the new year with a look back at what I loved.

Hello friends,

I always like to start the new year with a look back at what I loved. January is inevitably a self-reflective time of year, with days off, cold weather keeping you inside, optimistic resolutions, and all that. In this moment of calm before work gets busy again and school picks back up, I prefer to sort through the old rather than focusing my attention solely on the new. As I spent these past few weeks decluttering my email inbox, sorting through the books and papers that have accumulated around my desk, and scrolled back through my camera roll, I was struck by how rich of a year 2022 was (and how goddamn hard it was to narrow down this list of favorites).

I started my master's program and ended with a trip to Berlin and Lisbon. Between January and December, somehow read 60 books (??), started a job at a museum I love dearly, and contributed essays and poems to other publications. I went to the aquarium with friends, ate an ungodly amount of oysters, saw (and smelled) lots of great art, went dandelion picking, visited a Renaissance Faire in the pouring rain, and danced many nights away. I'm so grateful to everyone I adventured with this past year, old and new IRL and online friends alike. Thank you.

TOUCH

I read a lot of really great books last year, but none stuck with me quite like Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died. While other child stars from the 90s and early 2000s have sought to cater to fans' nostalgia, McCurdy reflects on her turbulent life behind-the-scenes, including the struggle to extricate herself from her mother's abuse, recovering from eating disorders, and the ways she was exploited by Nickelodeon during her time on iCarly. This is not a how-to on navigating Hollywood or becoming a successful actor; it's a poignant, vulnerable story of loss and healing.

If I could distill 2022 into a single fragrance it would have to be Studied by Liis. Besides the obvious nod to my current position as a graduate student, this scent really encapsulates the balance I was seeking this past year. You have the delicate notes of pear and muskmallow, a little floral burst of iris playing off the earthiness of carrot seed, soft cashmere and the musk of ambroxan. It's a subtle androgynous scent that's both rooted in the warm and the bodily and bursting with a fruity sweetness.

I almost never talk about clothes on here, but I'd be remiss if I didn't express some gratitude for my Sorel Brex Chelsea Boots. One of my goals in 2022 was to be more mindful in what I bought, to invest in the pieces I wear everyday, and prioritize practicality and functionality over fads of trendiness. These ticked all the boxes for me: waterproof, real leather, a slight platform that I could still walk in, chunky but not unbearably heavy, and no painful break-in period needed.

While we’re on the topic of fashion, I want to mention my a favorite new jewelry brand: W0dd. Based out of Bangkok, they make stunning silver pieces that play with organic shapes and slick patterns, all with an air of timeless futurism. I have two pieces that I like to layer, but my particular favorite is my initial necklace. I’ve never been one to wear nameplate necklaces, but this design feels so cool and elevated.

@elliebotomancc: here is my coffee and here’s what i’m currently reading #booktok #jennyodell #coffeeandcurrentlyreading #bookrecs

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The award for cutest purchase of 2022 goes to Couplet Coffee’s The Lover’s French Press. I use this every time I make coffee in the morning, and I feel like the sweet heart-shaped design cheers me up just as much as the caffeine does. If you’re looking to brighten up your brewing experience, I can’t recommend supporting this queer woman-owned business enough.

LOOK

Last summer, I was introduced to Alex Prager’s photography at the Berlin Biennale. I remember both times I encountered her work, walking up to these massive blown-up images that filled the gallery wall from floor to ceiling and becoming absolutely enveloped in Prager’s style of cinematic storytelling. Prager concerns herself with character studies, exploring archetypes, identity, and class through the figures in her crowded photographs. Prager plays with artificiality and style, dressing up her subjects in ways that feel equal parts theatrical and alienating.

Mario Ayala’s “Truck Stop” at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery was one of the most wonderfully bizarre shows I saw in 2022. Ayala’s series of paintings and sculptures evoke Southwestern Americana with a surreal twist, acting as odes to Southern California’s working class communities, highway billboards, and trucker culture. My particular favorite was an entire chapel replica built inside the gallery, decorated with playful subversions of Evangelical Christianity, prosperity gospel, and queer masculinity.

I never thought I'd become so invested in the history of lace-making, but "Threads of Power" at the Bard Graduate Center was a wonderful survey of the craft from its origins in the 16th century to today. I loved how the show exhibited paintings, books, and photographs alongside pieces from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen, and welcomed the Brooklyn Lace Guild into their space to show how the delicate craft continues today. Beyond showcasing lace’s beauty, the show highlighted the extensive labor that went into making lace, and showed how these intricate decorative pieces became fashionable symbols of economic power and social authority throughout the ages.

“Symbionts” at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center sent me down a rabbit hole of bio art last year. Animal, microbes, fungi, and plants became both material and muse for these artists. There were mushrooms sprouting of out old beach balls, a room with spiders in it, painting-like blooms of algae, and a self-sustaining installation that kept aquatic plants alive using recycled wastewater. The biological, ecological, social, and cultural all became entangled in these experimental interspecies artworks.

LISTEN

To no one's surprise, one of my favorite albums of 2022 was Ethel Cain's Preacher's Daughter. A monstrous tangle of Southern Gothic pop, country, grunge metal, and rock, the album plays with tropes of rural Americana, heartland nostalgia, evangelical salvation, and intimate violence. For the uninitiated: the album tells the story of Ethel Cain, a runaway who falls in love with (and is later eaten by) her cannibalistic lover. Through her tragic lyricism, gut-wrenching queer storytelling, and wailing screams, Cain turn this gruesome narrative into a haunting critique of the American dream.

If you asked me for podcast recommendations last year, odds are I mentioned Celebrity Memoir Book Club. I’m embarrassed at how quickly I go listen to each new episode, but I can’t resist spending an hour listening to these books get dissected into hilarious oblivion. Hosts Claire and Ashley do a great job of unpacking these stories, mindful of stars’ traumas, while also being critical about celebs’ privilege and toxic behavior. There’s something so cathartic about listening to two funny people call out the absurdity of celebrity self-help culture, book-writing money grabs, and the mental gymnastics the rich and famous will do for their personal brand. Some personal favorites are Danielle Bernstein, Rachel Hollis, Emily Ratajkowski, and Amy Poehler.

I first heard “They Never Taught Us To” by Bored Lord and IDHAZ at the music festival I go to in upstate New York at the end of every summer, and since then it’s been playing on a loop inside my head. I love how the song’s punchy vocals pair so perfectly with its deliciously synth-y rhythms, seducing you into the groove. Listening to it makes me feel like I could fight God, you know?

My most listened to album in 2022 was, without a doubt, Cinema by The Marías. This is no-skip masterpiece, full of dreamy, poetic songs soaked in an airy California cool. Tracks like “All I Really Want Is You,” “Spin Me Around” and “Heavy” ooze with slow, yearning romance, while gems like “Hush” and “The Mice Inside This Room” cut through the band’s usual sleepy soundscape with a sharpened edge.

I couldn’t have survived finals without this fantastic Fact Magazine mix from DJ Voices. Every time I listen, I feel like I'm about to go sonic splunking, diving headfirst into a wormhole of seamless blends layered with spacey textures and cavernous rhythms. It's a mix with a quiet ferocity that sinks its teeth into you and doesn't let go.

LICK

There's nothing I can say about the brilliance of Everything Everywhere All At Once that hasn't been said already, but I'll try. It was poignant, existential, and so utterly absurd and funny that I cried my way through it. It was such a refreshingly inventive film, and a thrilling (sometimes painfully relatable) emotional rollercoaster from start to finish. If you haven't seen yet, there's no better time than the present (or the past or the future all collapsing together through some interdimensional reality-jumping).

My favorite meal of 2022 was, without a doubt, at Taberna Sal Grosso in Lisbon. There’s a reason why there’s always a crowd of people waiting to squeeze into this tiny basement restaurant where single chalkboard menu dictates the mouthwatering selections that day. I still think about biting into their meaty stingray, their octopus cooked to perfection, their tender diced tuna, and the crackle of their fried baby squid.

Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology (MAAT) also stole my heart last year. Their gorgeous building undulates like a wave on the shoreline, and the exhibitions continue from this sleek space into a repurposed power station next door where you can wander through galleries of contemporary art and explore preserved machinery. It was such a great experience taking in their shows about Portuguese and international artists while also getting lost in this stunning organic-machine hybrid.

In a year when we got bombarded with regency era, royalty stories, The Northman was a refreshing break from the corsets and lavish ballroom scenes. An epic Viking tale of vengeance across frigid Nordic shores, the film approached its rich subject matter with a commitment to historical accuracy while also embracing the strangeness and surreal beauty of Norse mythology and medieval storytelling. The Northman, in all of its grisly, sometimes downright feral intensity, is not for the faint of heart.

CLICK

Atavist Magazine blew it out of the water for me in 2022. Atavist’s mission is simple: publish a single longform narrative piece each month. This is not only a refreshing break from the pressure on digital publications to post content on a 24/7 basis, but the quality of their pieces are absolutely phenomenal. If you’re ever craving a deep-dive into a historical event, an interesting person, or a peculiar situation, this is the place to go to get completely engrossed. Among all of the high-caliber pieces on their site, “King of the Hill” and “The Shadow of the Ghost” are two favorites of mine.

Dana Kopel’s essay “Against Artsploitation” resonated with me, so much so that I think it should be essential reading for anyone working in museums. The piece recounts Kopel’s experience co-organizing the New Museum Union in 2018, and how staff came together despite institutional retaliation to fight for better conditions and living wages. I read this piece a few months after I started my current museum job and was saddened, although not surprised, that the same issues Kopel and her colleagues raised five years ago continue today, exacerbated by the greater austerity, precarity, and inequity that unfolded with the pandemic. Kopel writes, “A career, or a life, structured according to individual benefit is one structured by cruelty,” Kopel writes, “by the assumption that other people are exploitable and disposable.” Yet, in the face of all of this elitist competition and unsustainable exceptionalism, she reminds us that “struggle is collective.” There’s still work to be done.

Chelsea Rathburn’s poem “Introduction to Mycology” is a poetic feast of the fruiting and the fungal. Mushrooms become Rathburn’s vehicle for wrestling with the dynamic forces of change that (de/re)compose us at the frayed edges of life and death. This poem is a recognition of grief, collecting memories that sprout in the aftermath of loss. I loved this line in particular: “First taste of love, or toxic look-alike, / there was your stalk and cap, the earth and dark, / our hunger, wonder, and need.”

A.C. Wise’s short story “A Catalogue Of Sunlight At The End Of The World” begins at the conclusion of humanity’s time on Earth. As a ship prepares to take future generations into outer space, Wise’s narrator looks back on the life he built as he prepares one last gift for his family to take with them on their journey while he stays behind. In the face of all of the climate doom and pessimism that bombarded us in 2022, I found myself gravitating towards solarpunk, a genre of speculative fiction that resists despair through care and community. Don’t let the melancholy premise of this story deter you, it left me teary-eyed and heartachingly hopeful for the future.