“I woke up on Nov. 6 and turned on my phone,” recalls non-binary artist Eva Mueller. “I saw the news and went through a roller coaster of emotions. I knew right away I needed to do a portrait series. At first, I was going to call it the ‘Wall of Anger,’ but that was too narrow for all the emotions happening. I was on a mission and I made a plan to start it that day – all that happened before I got out of bed.”
The project became the ‘Wall of Emotions (WOE)’ and it did indeed begin that afternoon with friends who came by to sit for a portrait that would express how they felt.
“Each portrait captures an unfiltered closeup of raw emotion,” the artist explained. “I asked, how do you feel? And what do you feel?” The images were then changed into black and white to “reflect the polarization of our society.” The sitter’s handwritten words were overlaid on the image in red (“a color of urgency and alarm”), and then Mueller manually traced over the words with red ink and “painted intuitively on each print, creating an emotional bond between each person and me.”
The result is a set of 72 images (so far) that are a striking, visceral response to the current regime that has feeling of the punk aesthetic of the late 70’s. The sentiments range from ‘disgust’ to ‘hope,’ with a surprisingly wide variety of emotions in between: revolting, apathy, frustrated, grief, resolute, betrayed and many more, including one particularly simple but very expressive word – f*ck !
Photo sessions were held in various spots, including Vers BK, Surreal Skin Care, Red Eye and Maison 10. That gallery’s co-owner, Tom Blackie, calls the project “incredibly important” and said that “we were more than happy to have them shoot here.” He notes that “many of us in the New York art world was shocked with the utter sadness of the whole thing,” and he feels that WOE “affected people who hadn’t yet examined their feelings,” and he thinks that it “may encourage people to be more political.”
The images were shown previously during Art Basel at Brian Whitely’s Satellite Art Show (an alternative venue to that event) in December and in the city on Monday at the Satellite Gallery on Broome Street – which happened to be both the inauguration and Martin Luther King Day – for just that day. Participants in the project and many others came by to see how their images looked on the wall with the others and to chat with Mueller, who would occasionally grab her camera and do another portrait to add to the ongoing series.
Artist Elisa Blynn was one of those sitters (okay, she was standing), and she had strong feelings about it. “This is the perfect project for this moment,” she said. Her word was “resolve.“As a community, we have to alchemize our inner turmoil into hope and possibility. “
Helixx C. Armageddon, a multi-faceted performance artist who was on the wall, noted that “the process itself led me to the idea that there is so much more work to be done to find a way through this, considering the weight of it all.” Her word is ‘pensive.’
Another participant, Stephen Gemberling, chose to express himself with the word ‘disillusion.’
“It’s very moving,” he says of the work. “I grew up in southern Pennsylvania, and when I was eight years old, the Klan burned crosses in my yard. I am afraid that could happen again now”.
Mueller is not yet in the piece, but if it happens, their word will be ‘disbelief.’
“I just can’t believe that the majority of the US wants fascism,” they explain. Mueller found that the artistic process was a learning experience as well. “I learned that we all need each other! I was taught not to rely on others and I never felt a sense of community. I know now that I have a community that I belong to and it means a lot to me.”
Mueller plans to continue doing portraits for WOE and exhibiting them. Follow them on Instagram for announcements: @evamuellerart.
Their website, which explores gender identity and sexual themes, is definitely NSFW: evamueller-art.com.
Note: This photographer/writer is one of the subjects depicted in WOE.
