Downtown Manhattan in March. Photo by Alëna Adamson
Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse was happening in the first hours of 3.14 Pi Day. New York City residents dreamt of weird stuff. The ones who pulled an all-nighter acted violent towards themselves. Anxiety and paranoia.
Sin city pays for its shady life choices.
NASA image shows the phases of the lunar eclipse
“It was a cold February evening on the Lower East Side, and I walked through empty streets with a canvas I put together back in October. I felt dizzy, but confident: it belongs to them streets. I made it with headlines from the oldest NYC newspaper”.
A couple weeks ago I had my Art Presentation at Equity Gallery in Manhattan. All thanks to Transcender Art Collective initiative, I had a chance to talk about my game of characters and words.
It all started back in May when I lost my job. Read more about it here, if interested.
Months went by. And then It was this crazy day outside. Election Day. And so I had an urge to make this Trump Painting.
I took it to Washington Square Park on inauguration day. I danced with it. Placed it in the snow. I filmed it. I wasn’t really trying to sell it - it was more like a public showing. And that’s how I entered a zone of Performance.
Selling my paintings on NYC street took some nerve. I really questioned my intentions. What am I trying to say with my art? Does it have to be politically influenced just because it’s inspired by the news?
Who needs politicians if there are celebs, after all?
My collage-cutting discoveries took me to a magic place where words started to become city buildings. My characters turned into female divas, surrounded by random words. Is it a treat or power? You decide for yourself.
The skies turned peachy, buildings - faded grey. I forced myself out of my room. I walked west
“Don’t ever leave your room!” - said Joseph Brodsky. He continued:
“Let nobody but the room
know what you look like. Incognito ergo sum,
as substance informed its form when it felt despair.
Don’t leave the room! You know, it’s not France out there”.
It’s Brooklyn, and I call it home. It’s been 4400 days since I’ve arrived. 12 years ago or so. Sunsets are nice. I like the pizza sign doubled-up and reflected in a parked car. What else?
Before moving here, I imagined myself owning a photo studio. Figuratively speaking, my initial dream of NYC started in an empty cyclorama space in my head. Now I’m traumatized by it. I start walking faster when I see photo equipment in street windows.
What attracts me the most is towers.
They seem so stable. Not bothered by anything. Strong.
I’d like to be strong one day.
One Sunday afternoon I followed The Highline abandoned rail road, drowning in fluffy spikelets. There it was: a divine multicolored terrarium.
The dichroic glass structure transformed New York downtown views into a puzzle. I couldn’t walk away from this distorted multidimensional reality created by a Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga. Reflections change depending on an angle you’re looking at it from. The image refraction concept reminded me that life circumstances have no value, really. Just like the fern inside we get stuck in a particular way of thinking. «It all depends on how you look at things and not how they are in themselves» - Carl Jung.
Shapes are uncertain, palette is bright. Abstract human figures in unexpected patterns and color mismatch forms. Ready to teleport?
I’m talking about Paris of the early 20th-century and Orphism avant-garde art-movement. Creations of the most interesting cultural time period currently on view at The Guggenheim.
L-R: Marcel Duchamp’ painting, Guggenheim library museum entrance + a frame from “library scene” in Interstellar movie. Digital Collage by Alëna Adamson.
It all started with "Sad Young Man on a Train" for me. They hanged this Marcel’s Duchamp painting next to the library entrance. The deconstructed art phenomena and its warm colors reminded me of rustling yellow book pages. Looking at the canvas from afar, I clearly imagined my favorite “Landing in the Tesseract” scene from C. Nolan’s “Interstellar”. In my mind, it was located in the round Guggenheim wall hole aka library entrance.
Orphism as an “enhanced cubism” art-movement was created by a poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire. It first appeared in 1913 - very important year in the historical sense. “The Year Before the Storm”. There’s a whole book by Florian Illies about it. Magic of everything happening at once in Europe on the threshold of the first world wars. Paintings are hypnotizing and alive. The style is associated, mainly, with Robert Delaunay and his wife Sonia, whose grandiose canvas above invites you to spy on Parisian party goers. And for her husband Robert Delaunay - I just love how he deconstructs Eiffel Tower.
Robert Delaunay - “L'Equipe de Cardiff” 1913 and “Eiffel Tower”, 1911.
When everything suddenly loses its meaning, exposing the void of a human existence - I place myself in between of two Warhol’s noses: big and small, Before and After, [4]
The artwork’s replica used to hang on my tiny NYC kitchen’s wall, left there by previous residents, my friends. The original 1962 canvas is on view at Whitney Museum, it’s 6 feet tall - serves as a perfect backdrop for a selfie. I go there on a Friday night, for free.
After a spin of noses I approach a big-chested bronze mama - the sculpture just around the corner. A “Standing Woman” by Gaston Lachaise.
I count graceful ladyfingers — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This woman is in charge.
The pretty colored painting next to her is a portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney - American sculptor and art collector, the Whitney Museum’s founder. I stare at her in awe: all my favorite color combinations, silks. The poetry…
Feeling lostNext moment - foundTrapped in New York undergroundElevator “A” to “One”Dirt and rats - next level. Done?
Since I got fired from New York Post photo department back in May I’ve been making acrylic paintings combined with the newspaper's headlines. I cut them from my personal 2023/24 archive of papers I took home on my "office days" at News Corp building on 6th Ave.
As a result, I currently have six 16x20 canvases reflecting on our bloody news reality. I love combining catchy words and phrases in unexpected ways: it brings me sense of peace and… mind control?
The season changed.
I painted slow.
My Buddha danced -
His crown fell low.
Headlines took over fake blue skies:
Each word like cloud in disguise.
Painting & poetry by Alëna Adamson, December 2024
Selfie with a Soviet poster
“Don It Again” - collage by Alëna Adamson, 11.07.2024
I've been working on this art piece over the last two days. It shows "Don it Again" Trump's face covered with a fragment of a NY Post headline. The only thing left from Kamala is a pearl earring. "Trump Country" says the hat inserted into her gone face.
Joe Biden in the bottom left corner says "BLIN" in Russian.
Bloody News Reality, here we go.
Reconstructing my reality and personality with the help of Jungian analysis I realized that there’s so much darkness in my unconsciousness - apparently, it might be a karmic curse or generational trauma history. It comes in my dreams trying to teach me lessons and giving out weird hints. If only I could decode them quickly.
I’ve been drawing, but it gives no answers, really. All I know that there’s so much fear in me, wild, unexplained, raw and animalistic. It’s bad. Fear evokes anger and takes away power.
“You are just so, so angry, - he told me. - Relax”. This statement made me furious. My left arm was pulled in the air by some invisible force. My face crooked in a grin of hate. An almost uncontrollable part of myself was trying to reach the nasty MF’ neck. I woke up and remembered:
"Namah Saptanam Samyak Sambuddha Kotinam TADYATHA: Om! Cale Cule Cundi Svaha" - I sang.
Finished my favorite painting today. Named it “Bunny in The Wild”. It symbolizes a free spirit with the whole entire Universe injected in his somewhat human face.
As you can see, there’re two tamers shadows standing aside, one with a whip. Just have to trust the galaxy within!
“Bunny in The Wild” by Alëna Adamson
Harlem Art Sale, Oct. 3rd 2024
My whole life I worked in newspapers. There was a dark storage room in Tambov Courier editorial office with piles and piles of weekly issues. Floor-to-ceiling rows of A3 trash. Typography excess - two years archive. Headlines and news columns rotting unattended, unopened. I was a 17 years old reporter with an ambition of a photographer, even artist perhaps, and I sneaked into that room once. I had a camera on a tripod with me. I’ve heard a mouse rustling some pages. It smelled like dry bread and instant coffee. I had a vision of myself positioned comfortably upfront, with the Archive Paper Giant in the background, in all its glory.
Surrounded by printed words doomed for an infinite storage incarceration.
These days I have my own newspapers archive. New York Post daily issues, from January to May 2024. Each one of them traveled from a News Corp building on MTA train with me while I was working there in a photo department. I went through hundreds of articles, creepy news and crime reports, selecting juicy meanings, very special to me. I checked out mugshots and celebrity galleries, I remembered Andy Warhol - he loved tabloids and copied front pages obsessively, with a pencil.
I’m not here for the pencils. I like cut-outs and neon paints. I see these headlines as a part of my identity now. They are reminders of those days. They are memories of loud newsroom talks. They are my emotions experienced on a day of the paper release. And it’s all saved in print and released to the public.
I glue them onto canvases and tell my own tales. I feel so seen.
Creating an art piece is not enough. Just like a newspaper, it has to find its reader. And so my performance has been taken to the streets.
It was a lively Friday night in Harlem, I put my collages and paintings on display, I worried. A fat rat ran by, I thought of luck. I kept working on canvases adding headlines - ignoring rodents and thinking of 2023 Rat Czar story - where is she now? Yesterday’s news. The headlines are still here though. People stopped by and asked questions. Mostly about rats. But they also just wanted to know my story. The truth is, such experiences cannot be kept in a dark room with the dreadful future. They look much better on brick walls, exposed.
There was a dream I had a couple weeks ago involving my past co-workers, bosses, random people with cigarettes and notebooks. Were they journalists? It seemed like a party in a tall tower — night time fog and blurry buildings — Gotham city vibes. Different kind of interactions.
A sweaty man asking to talk to him in private.
Clowns dancing around with “chance” cardboard signs.
HR lady imitating a taro reading with 20s dollar bills.
A colleague asking me to heal her knee with the power of my mind.
Observing this surrealistic psycho triller as a main character was traumatizing enough, but not for my subconsciousness. Out of nowhere, I had a chewing gum stuck in my mouth. I kept nervously munching on it first, but it grew in volume and turned into a soft clay mass. I just wanted to get it out. I listened and listened. I couldn’t say a word.
I guess it’s an inner pressure to write about my recent work situation. Let’s pick a genre first. What about a letter? I send so many of them those days — applying for jobs, editing resumes, mixing up work experiences, adding skills, links, achievements.
“Hello, — I’ll write to an email address named “careers”. — I was just walking around and looking at the foggy lights of skyscrapers from afar. I closed my right eye, and my left one was watering so much. I could barely see. But this damned view would please even a half-blind person, right?
So what about you, are you looking at Manhattan or Brooklyn, or maybe both? Probably sitting on a white couch on some twenty-second floor and your finger is poking at my letter. Poking and poking, trying to delete it. And the phone is frozen. And the funniest thing is that the reason — your phone, my eye — is the same: it’s the weather’s change. Global warning, local freezing, humid mind winds”.
Drawing by me. Filtered pic with Polaroid camera by Greg Casimir
Rolling their eyes, “careers” finally delete my letter, hurry up and taking a speedy elevator down. Some pressure is taken off their head, filling ears with an invisible air balloon. Once outside, they hop into a yellow cab and yell ”SohO!” at a driver. Beethoven’s “Für Elise” is playing in the car, but it’s an impromptu cover performed by a band called “Tennessee’ Worn Jeans”. The tempo is fast, brisk, like a horse out of breath after racing. The melody bounces from side to side, and my addressee starts to feel sick.
“You know, — continues my own “Für Elise”, now from the spam folder. — Everyone around here just try to survive — I get it. It’s important to appreciate what you have, but you also need to know where you’re going. Soho on Friday night sounds like a great idea!”
RE: Automatic response from user “careers”:
“Dear Alena,
?
To be continued.
A human mind can be compared to a parasitic plant. It attaches itself to a tree of a certain reality and stays there stuck for life unless it discovers a possibility to move onto another host - a taller tree with a fuller crown, better access to the sun and well-nourished roots. But how can a vine with no eyes believe in the existence of other trees around? That’s where it gets ridiculous: you just have to have faith in fairy tales.
See your beautiful dream tree-reality clearly even as the blind ivy you are. Pin the target slide in your head and move your leaves, one by one, in the direction of the imaginary achievement. There will be many distractions on the way trying to get you confused. Rocks be falling and other plants trying to block you from further moves. There’s also your own shadow aka fear.
I came to the point of my life when my mind was feeding off its own sick and sad-looking stems with no flowers, running destructive thoughts in circles, drying out the tree’s roots and wanting to end its existence. Unfortunately, the mind is infinite and can’t die. It just finds itself attached to different trees-realities. It also obeys to multi-dimensional conservation laws known to humanity for a very long time. And so I ask AI… What are those laws? And NYC answers.
A Men’s Shirt. Amen. My personal style struggles seem to fade away now with this perfect piece of clothing. What makes it even better is the unique embroidery detail created by my golden-hands Katrina Fashion Fairy. I styled it with crocheted pajama shorts, put on nude ballet flats and walked out of my fashion depression. Next thing I saw was this INSANE million-beads-decorated car casually parked on NYC sidewalk. Must be some kind of a hint from the Universe? Dress-up spell in every stitch indeed.
Photo of me wearing Art & Shock LA shirt, by Lisa I. Embroidery details by Katrina Dress Up
These Art & Shock shirts are truly magical: my friend finds them in local thrift stores in LA and then embroiders flowers, flies, kisses and other cute details. Cool right? Not too much with a stylish touch.
Order yours: https://www.instagram.com/katrinadressup/
Fashion Fairy Katrina Dress Up in her habitat
Check it out here: https://www.depop.com/katrinadressup/
Imagine walking around in this silk & wool Etro pant suit and hand-made pearls necklace? Not sure if I could. If only for a picture. Madame President indeed!
Photo of me styled & dressed by Katrina Dress Up in February 2023.
“Santa Monica Recycles” - photo of Katerina by me, February 2023.
We see our life character clearly in the world of photos, videos and social media, but what about daily life? Do you dress-up?
“Katrina Dress Up” - photo by me, February 2023.
My friend is an artist. She paints these large-scale acrylic abstractions. Four years ago I walked into her apartment in New York, laid down comfortably on a massage table she had placed next to one of her artworks and let her tattoo my face. The procedure took a couple of hours. Sharp needles tickled my forehead, injecting color in between of eyebrows hair. I loved the result: my silent films 1920s face has been transformed into a dark-framed 2020s feature.
Painting & permanent brows make-up by Anna Nareiko
In two years the paint has faded, and I had to go & tattoo my brows again. In a professional world of permanent make-up it’s called “touch-up”. This time it was in a SPA setting, my eyebrows masteritza was tired of New York and was getting ready to leave. If you told me back then that I will fly all the way to St Augustine, Florida in 2024 to tattoo my eyebrows, I would’ve probably laughed. I still am.
O, du lieber Augustin (oh, dear Augustine)Augustin, Augustin,Mädl ist weg, Mädl ist weg (Girl is Gone)But my eyebrows are back in place! Oh, Augustine*. And what will you do for the beauty?
Her name is Anna Nareiko and her art is permanently on my face.
Thank you, Ms. Artist. Frida Kahlo couldn't even dream.
A TANK explodes in East Europe on a MINE - digital collage
As you might know, 🇷🇺 white-blue-red tricolor belongs to Russia. Thanks to a never ending “special operation” activity in Far Fur Lands of medved, samovar and vodka right now, we have a news machine disaster non-stop creating content for tripped out Pinky Putin & Vova Brain reality-show episodes. American citizens cover production costs, but reasonably raise many questions as they have no idea who is in charge of this weird project. Perhaps, AI.
As a result, my controlling and curious mind keeps introducing me to a wonderfully sabotaging idea of “going back to my country to check myself”.
Who knows, maybe they all just sit together with Xi Jinping in Kremlin and meditate without me?
“But you can’t go!” - annoyed and depressed Woody Allen’ character exclaims in my head. This гундосing-пиндосing inner voice is always right.
In my motherland, you see, I’ll be considered a “foreign agent”. That sounds like a lot of trouble I don’t need (but subconsciously really want to experience).
I notice little details around me obsessively and I force my sacred meanings onto them.
There was a white-blue-red appearance of a tiny candy wrapper flying in the air in front of my eyes in NYC park today. The weather turned windy earlier, and the fresh breeze from both rivers might’ve picked up this piece of trash tricolor. It looked alarming. The skies were bright white and cloudy, and the candy wrapper kept spinning in the air for a minute or two, shining. I thought of nukes.
Can they?