Gabrielle Garland’s Attention Seeking Housing project
Hidden in an uncharted corner of the Internet lives a small, vibrant neighborhood. Their inhabitants serve a double function: they inhabit and are themselves sites of inhabitation. They’re houses. And you are one of them. Muffled chatter gives away your location to those who know where to look, those who are well-versed in the digital world of art, because online is where you reside. You lot strongly resemble a gated community, separated by white space instead of iron fences. When people ask you for directions, you send them to Gabrielle Garland’s website and tell them to start scrolling. Gabrielle (you prefer calling her Gabby) is your architect, your designer, your creator. She didn’t give you names, but you know that does not diminish your value. What matters is your little turf and here, you all are the vestigial virgins protecting the sacred flame of attention.
Gabrielle Garland, Untitled 159, 2020. Acrylic on canvas over panel. 22 x 29 in.
Wait, is that really how you look? Sure, you’ve had neighbors describe your appearance, but you never thought you looked that bloated. You contain mirrors but they serve no meaningful use. At most, you only have access to small reflections of your insides. What separates you from the rest is that you have taste. Sculpted in a late modern style with Mediterranean accents, you have a little bit of flair: palm trees, artworks, and even a fountain. But like your neighbors, your borders are unstable. You pulsate and wobble, as if your color-saturated form cannot contain the ecstatic energy it encloses. Your geometry shifts from the orthogonal to the oblique. Warped, elastic perspectives connect you all. You make sense when viewed in the context of your residential area, a perfect American suburbia. Restrictive zoning laws allow only for single-family homes and shorn lawns bereft of biodiversity. You take pride in your homogeneity and the paucity of bugs.
Some of your neighbors have made it out of the site, plunged into the deep wide web. You have heard of their voyages across different websites. When they return from their travels, they recount their tales in epic poems as the rest of you quiver in awe. They occasionally mention the grandiloquence of writers when they become the topic of review, an honor you could only dream of. No, that’s not envy. Critics compare them to all-American art-historical movements, like Precisionism. You love your community, but you often find yourself engulfed by a longing. A deep desire to be copied and seen.
Ever since a neighbor introduced you to a certain critic, his concept of aura has become your community’s core value. Not its preservation, but its destruction. It is obvious in your appearance, you are all cut from the same cloth, underpinned by the same visual logic, illustrations of reproducibility. You don’t want to be Gabby’s secret, you are made to be seen! You know you have a flesh-world counterpart made of linen and acrylic paint, but you prefer your planar and pixelated efficiency, its beautiful ability to be copied and shared. Machines have far progressed since precisionist times, so what is stopping you from mass circulation? You suspect it is your absence of humans. Have they not had the spotlight for long enough?
How can Americans be proud of their heritage when they can’t celebrate their homes? It is your house, your rules and you demand to be shared.
