Reader Reflections

Hindsight is 20/20. So, we asked artists and people working in the arts how this year has fractured or evolved their approach to creative life and what they would like to see change for the better in the arts.

Reflecting on the year that is, brings us into the present to plan for the future.

Agus Wijaya

Artist

I was working on this artwork for a show in Indonesia that was planned to happen sometime this year. It was to be my first in my home country, so already I was feeling contemplative. But, like many, it’s now postponed ‘indefinitely’.

As things unfolded, the changes were perplexing and the uncertainty was disenabling. I paused making art to ensure I could keep my job for my young family. And when I continued, I cautiously changed it from a tricky installation to a digital image. It was a tense period, but it did give plenty of time to rest and digest.

It allowed me to cherish the beauty of a slower pace and step into a liminal state. To appreciate what resides once everyday noise recedes into the background; to embrace the continual reconfiguration as we try to make sense of those that don’t; to keep going, one step at a time or even pause if we have to, but more slowly.

I hope art will have more time to take better care of all its community members, especially the younglings and less observed ones; that it will bravely go slower and beyond snapping back to the old ways.

Anni Hagberg

Artist

2020 has broken my practice and reassembled it as something I had never thought it would be. Researching material agency and the dynamic interactions between glass, clay and steel