Emily Casella
Was Reminded of Death, Shocked and Upset (January 2020)
color pencil and graphite
24 x 16 in.
NFS
“At the start of this year in January I turned 25, which felt more mortalizing than any other birthday. In this time of grappling the fact of death, I made this colored pencil drawing. My family has seen many people pass away the last decade, but this particular birthday I was feeling weird weight of loss of myself of my natural process of life. 2020 seemed like an exciting turning point, but the turning point has been seen with hardship and changes that the United States has been swept in.
I did not know that I would spend a vast majority of my time at my house in 2020, in this chair. I did not know that this year would see so many terrible and preventable deaths. The uncovering and re-revealing of injustices in our government systems has been appalling, and we are left feeling angered, raw, and in a perpetual state of thinking about what is going on in this time. I did not know the severe gravity of what this year would bring when making this drawing, but it is still a overwhelming state of being that we as a country have to grapple with.
Now everything I read is distressing and appalling that things could have been handled differently, that loss of using time and resources effectively. The loss due to the pandemic from CoVID-19 but also the loss of humans from the insidious disease of racism. Living people have to do better to beat the virus and white supremacy.”
© Emily Casella