quarantine portrait no. 1 “有的海不认识自己的深度” / “sometimes the ocean cannot recognize it’s own depths” 🌊Subject: 超超from贵州/ guizhou / miao 🎏 Sometimes it takes a global pandemic to begin painting portraits for yourself. I haven’t painted anything for myself in six years. I remember when painting was an emotional release. I’d stay in the highschool art room way after classes ended, until the janitors kicked me out. I remember when the blue on a blank page would make me feel safe. I’m going to be painting a series of portraits of diasporic and indigenous friends, their bodies becoming the land that made them or the land that they are displaced from. To paint we have to disappear. When the limits of the written language will never set me free: I return to color: a place without language. What is the opposite of immigration? Perhaps it is the belonging we find in a body that is told to never belong. Perhaps it is the color we fear the most, appearing in our dreams to beckon us back home. #artistsoninstagram #portraitpainting #acrylicpainting #blue #asian