ARTIST STATEMENT
My piece “State Of The Union: Kiss It, Make It Better,” shows the outcome of a series of performances, where I place adhesive bandages/ “band aids” over a map of the continental United States, and kiss the band aid as one would kiss a child’s minor scrape. The gesture of “kissing it all better” carries a magic to heal the booboo. Children stop crying and resume their running and playing.
This magic healing practice is generally associated with women, be it a mother, a sister, sometimes even a sympathetic stranger, visiting the park with her own child. Could this same magic of kissing it better be used to heal a country? I investigated this theory with my piece. I put band aids on the map, painstakingly, believing that there must be sincere care in all aspects of this project for the magic to work.
Once the map has been sufficiently covered in bandages, I apply my lipstick and kiss, and kiss, and kiss the map. There was the trouble. as i kissed the map, it became dark with the red stains of my lipstick. As if there was blood seeping through the band aids. To rectify this, i again bandaged the map, and kissed it once again, leading to the same result.
Magic kisses can fix a scrape, but that’s fundamentally different from a gaping wound. Gentleness and a soft touch might sooth for a while, but the problem at hand is that this world was built upon blood. How may we be saved?
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nena Christeina is an artist living and working in Westchester, New York. They’re in their second year of the MFA visual arts program at Purchase College at SUNY. nena works in painting, drawing, performance, and crochet sculpture. They explore themes of beauty and connectedness against the harsh reality that the world will be ending in fire, and very soon.
© Nena Christeina