| Glenn Seaborg |
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Iris Chang
encaustic & collage on wood
81.5" x 44.25"
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i live in a world of grey
iris chang lives in a world of black & white to me everything is the balancing of arcane minute forces to iris there are moments in your life when you have to make a choice when you can do the right thing or live the rest of your life as a lie to me “i tried it once, but i didn’t inhale” isn’t really a lie someone told us it’s really a lie we agreed to tell with him that the schism in him is really the schism in american culture that a less ambiguous answer would have made it impossible for one or another of the groups in america’s divide to support him iris says there is truth there is lie there is nothing else iris compels us to take the high road regardless of the outcome if you take the low road even if you succeed inevitably you still have nothing if you take the high road regardless of the outcome |
at least you took the high road as i’ve grown older and more savvy regarding the operations of the “real world” it took iris to remind me of the simple clarity that a child understands but which an adult so easily obfuscates isn’t this what these portraits are all about about teasing some moment of clarity from all the obfuscation in the rape of nanking iris tells the story of a forgotten world war II genocide reminds us of yet another of humankind’s transgressions that would so much more easily if not truthfully be forgotten she chants the names and the stories of the women and soldiers and elderly and infants who were extinguished whose blood once made the yang-tse river flow red but whose memory is more conveniently forgotten by a world looking forward |
| Author |
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11 July 99
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