[npr]

Walk into the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. right now and you will find a painting that has been ripped to shreds.

Another one, nearby, hangs half-loose from its stretcher, rumpled. It’s a portrait of Thomas Jefferson; behind it, you glimpse a seated black woman.

They are works by the artist Titus Kaphar. He takes familiar images and remakes them. Maybe he pulls a hidden figure to the front.

His work often confronts the history of slavery and racism in the United States.

“If we are not honest about our past, then we cannot have a clear direction towards our future,” Kaphar says in an interview.

As of today, Kaphar’s work has been recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship — the “genius” grants which come with a $625,000 unrestricted award (paid over five years). The phone call informing him of the fellowship came at his total surprise.

“The truth of the matter is: I did not believe the person on the other end,” Kaphar says. “And in fact, I said, ‘Stop it, who is this?’ But no, they reassured me that in fact it was real.”

Meet The MacArthur Fellow Disrupting Racism In Art

Photo: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

[thequotejournals]

There are times when I’m alone that I think, this is it. This is actually the natural state. All I need are my thoughts and my small acts of creation and my ability to go or do whatever I want to go or do. I am myself, and that is the point. Pairing is a social construction. It is by no means necessary for everyone to do it. Maybe I’m better like this. Maybe I could live my life in my own world, and then simply leave it when it’s time to go.

David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary (via thequotejournals)

[cyberspace-saga]

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (via strange-infatuation)

[bonniepangart]

Book Dinosaurs

Posting on Tumblr my art in the past few months.

[sniffling]

im fucking dying

[dontbewithoutasmile]

actually me tho

[bookmania]

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (via bookmania)

pretty much

[wordsnquotes]

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (via fyp-philosophy)

[fyp-philosophy]

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.

Rainer Maria Rilke | @fyp-philosophy (via fyp-philosophy)

[gerrycanavan]

[wethrowaway111111world-deactiva]

“The most terrible thing about pornography is that it tells male truth. The most insidious thing about pornography is that it tells male truth as if it were universal truth. Those depictions of women in chains being tortured are supposed to represent our deepest erotic aspirations. And some of us believe it, don’t we? The most important thing about pornography is that the values in it are the common values of men. This is the crucial fact that both the male Right and the male Left, in their differing but mutually reinforcing ways, want to keep hidden from women. The male Right wants to hide the pornography, and the male Left wants to hide its meaning. Both want access to pornography so that men can be encouraged and energized by it. The Right wants secret access; the Left wants public access. But whether we see the pornography or not, the values expressed in it are the values expressed in the acts of rape and wife-beating, in the legal system, in religion, in art and in literature, in systematic economic discrimination against women, in the moribund academies, and by the good and wise and kind and enlightened in all of these fields and areas. Pornography is not a genre of expression separate and different from the rest of life; it is a genre of expression fully in harmony with any culture in which it flourishes. This is so whether it is legal or illegal. And, in either case, pornography functions to perpetuate male supremacy and crimes of violence against women because it conditions, trains, educates, and inspires men to despise women, to use women, to hurt women. Pornography exists because men despise women, and men despise women in part because pornography exists.”

- Andrea Dworkin, Letters From A War Zone

[dontbewithoutasmile]

yes. yes. wow, yes.

[dontbewithoutasmile]

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

[penguinrandomhouse]

Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you―and go after those things as if nothing else matters. Because, actually, nothing does.

George Saunders (via mishproductions)

[worshipgifs]

[dontbewithoutasmile]

it’s so easy to laugh/ so easy to hate/ it takes strength/ to be gentle and kind -”I know it’s over”, The Smiths

[wordsnquotes]

Interacting with other people does not come naturally to me; it is a strain and requires effort. And since it does not come naturally to me I feel like I am not really myself when I make that effort. I feel fairly comfortable with my family, but even with them I sometimes feel the strain of not being alone.

Peter Cameron (via wordsnquotes)

[wordsnquotes]

What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted—? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all that blandly held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to run away? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Or is it better to throw yourself headfirst and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (via wordsnquotes)

[wordsnquotes]

There is no sun without shadows, and it is essential to know the night.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (via wordsnquotes)

[thequotejournals]

I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages (because how reckless can a form of digitized communication be?) and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love saying, Kiss me harder, and You’re a good person, and, You brighten my day. I live my life as straight-forward as possible. Because one day, I might get hit by a bus. Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s scary. Maybe it seems downright impossible to just be—to just let people know you want them, need them, feel like, in this very moment, you will die if you do not see them, hold them, touch them in some way whether its your feet on their thighs on the couch or your tongue in their mouth or your heart in their hands. But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate. And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care. We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans. We never know when the bus is coming.

Rachel C. Lewis, Tell The People You Love That You Love Them (via wordsnquotes)