The Way It Is is a collaborative project with Sandra Harvey, an artist I met in Adams, Massachusett, who graduated from a BFA program in the 1960s. Drawing from our intimate conversations, we decided to share studios and started a year-long collaboration to explore our intergenerational artists’ relationships. The project challenges the hierarchies in the American cultural marketplace, and the evaluation system defines success or failure in the art world. “Who is privileged to be exhibited in the institution as an artist?” We question it together.

 

As a part of the project, I extended my first solo show to the two-person exhibition, which is intended to be exhibited only at A.I.R. gallery: one of the first women-owned galleries in New York.

 

In the exhibition, I created a site-specific installation in the gallery. The series of fictional images explored social issues as experienced by artists, caused by the “Winner Takes All” structure and the labor exploitation characteristic of capitalism. The Way It Is, is also the title of an article written by Sandra Harvey for a Cape Cod local newspaper in 1974. The text is exhibited as part of the installation along with Harvey’s painting and her most recent sculptures.