An ode to the art I didn't see in 2021
No ‘best of’ compilations this year; no cheery reflections about the great highlights or the best creative outputs of 2021. We are still immersed in a moment of mourning and adaptation, whether or not we choose to acknowledge it. The mood of the year has been saturated with sadness and sometimes it is sage to move with this, instead of fighting it. More and more, we search for, and momentarily lose grip of, the truth. While it is tempting to focus on loss as a landmark of 2021, surely adapting is the more productive starting point (I use ‘productive’ not in its capitalist sense, more towards attempting a state of mindfulness). Thinking about how we consume, and even access, art needs to be as multifaceted and subjective as thinking through the very perception of art itself. While 2020 was a time of trial and error for galleries and artists to meaningfully connect with audiences, a year later we accepted the fact that online viewing rooms are boring and that overload of artworks as JPEG
