Life is Art

A week into my freshman year, I visited the Museum of Fine Arts for the first time. I was alone and overwhelmed and stumbled my way to the Contemporary Art wing, where I saw written in bright white script, buzzing and humming on the wall: With You I Breathe.

Tracey Emin has often used neon writing to communicate short, punchy phrases in her artwork. But these words in particular struck me. At the time, I read it as a love note —but as I was drawn back to these words again and again, I felt a slight shift in my interpretation. It was so gradual I hardly even noticed it, but I began to see the sentiment as universal, not personal.

The “you” is left intentionally vague. Emin could be referring to a romantic partner, or she could be thinking of a friend. She could even be reaching out to a stranger.

Emin allows us to adopt this sentiment with a certain person in mind, but there’s always the implied nudge: everyone breathes. Every single person alive right now is breathing the same planet’s air.

And while every single person lives their own rich, colorful and individual life, our existences constantly overlap.

Since arriving at Boston University, art has played a major role in my understanding of the human experience. As a junior, returning to my position as The Buzz’s Culture Editor, I wrote an op-ed reflecting on the phrase “NOT ART,” which is spray painted in unlikely locations throughout Boston.

“If we place ‘art’ in a box and allow it to only exist within museums or galleries, then we miss the entire purpose of it: finding a way to express yourself so that others can appreciate or understand your thoughts and emotions,” I wrote. “It’s about human connection.”

Indeed, artwork cannot exist without inspiration and synergism; the act of creation is informed by the creations of others.

A recent exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, “The Artist’s Museum,” seeks to highlight this spirit of collaboration. A multitude of artists, working in a wide variety of different mediums, are put into intimate conversation: the same wooden cabinet hosts pieces by the likes of Christo and Jenny Holzer. An installation by Pierre Leguillon is is set to an Amy Winehouse soundtrack.

In Christian Marclay’s “Shake Rattle and Roll (Fluxmix),” 16 old-school video monitors stand circled in a dark room. Each screen displays a pair of hands, encased in white gloves (like a museum curator? A surgeon?), handling an everyday object. The objects may be rattled, caressed, even knocked against a table. But each object, however ordinary, is now a part of a subversive art installation.

We are taught to treat great art with reverence—to gaze admiringly, but never touch. But in “The Artist’s Museum,” the artists themselves are playing with other artists’ labors, despite obvious differences in method and meaning. They are throwing pieces back into the tides of innovation and energy; they are giving new life to what inspires them.

The exhibit’s description states, “The desire to collect objects and images of personal significance, and to make connections between them, is a nearly universal human experience.”

The way Marclay—and the exhibit as a whole—lionizes normality strikes a chord. To a certain extent, we all do this every day. Human beings are meaning-makers. We inject substance into our day-to-day surroundings, personally orchestrating our individual narratives.

Every morning, I turn on my teakettle, reach into my cabinet and pull out a mug. It’s white with flowers and a blue handle. It may feel mundane, but in the back of my mind, I remember the person who gave it to me. I subconsciously associate this mug with that birthday and my specific emotion upon receiving it.

By favoring this mug above my others, by keeping it at all, I am ostensibly endorsing that emotion. I am making a decision about how to conduct and define my own self.

This may seem like a stretch, but think of your saved ticket stubs; the postcards you collected during your semester abroad; Christmas cards you never threw away; photos you print and tape to your wall. This is the very essence of art, of collaboration and creative interpretation. This is your scrapbook, and all the fragments work together—as do the pieces in the exhibit— as “vital sources of inspiration and to create highly individualized models of [your] world.” Emily Zilber, the curator of past MFA exhibit “Crafted: Objects in Flux,” explained that she chose the word “flux” because it indicated “a state of continuous change.”

Looking back at who I was four years ago as a freshman and realizing how much I’ve matured since then—that feels like art. Reflecting on the way my college experience has intertwined and symbiotically thrived with the experiences of friends I’ve made here—that feels like art, too.

We are all curators. We make decisions about how to create our own environments and collect memories. We carefully choose other people to collaborate with, to constantly affect and be affected by.

The wall above my bed, which is saturated with film photos and Beanpot tickets, thrums with reminiscence. As graduation looms, and I reflect on four years of creating artwork with the people around me, I can’t help but grow nostalgic about the exhibit we built.

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALLIE AHLGRIM | DESIGN BY JAMI RUBIN