Too Long; Didn’t Read
curated by Jenn Sova
Heaven Gallery | Chicago, IL
June 2 - July 9, 2023
“Real time is slower than social-media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility.”
adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy (149)
adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy (149)
We're living in a time where our attention is more political than ever and has become a form of social currency. Between social media clicks and algorithms, 24-hour news cycles, endless streaming content, apps to ease every inconvenience, and expectations of being available at all times - digital distraction blurs our everyday interactions and confuses our relationships to labor, self, community, and empathy. Too Long; Didn’t Read (TL;DR) is coded internet language that exposes the attention culture that we accept as our new normal. TL;DR is an internet acronym signaling that whatever content follows could be long, tedious, and/or complex. This exhibition invites us to instead view TL;DR as a flag, warning us to pay attention, to be curious about what’s under the surface, and to decide, critically, what to invest our time in.
Too Long; Didn’t Read brings together works by Jose Luis Benavides, Andi Crist, Francis Dot, Hale Ekinci, Hasler Gomez, Kelly Kristin Jones, and Yuyang Zhang. While the works range from textiles, ceramics, painting, text, and installation, each artist employs tactics of attention. Yuyang Zhang and Andi Crist use humor and vernacular imagery to disarm their biting critiques of propaganda and professionalism. Francis Dot’s twenty-foot installation Time|Ghost|Town inundates the viewer with hazy outlines of histories of violence and extraction, inviting us to draw connections that may or may not be apparent. Similarly, Jose Luis Benavides’ letters presented from his documentary short, Letters to Lost Loved Ones, reveal and amplifies stories that our society works to silence, of incarcerated folks sharing their experience, struggles, and life during COVID-19 through their own voices and handwritten letters and poems. Hasler Gomez and Kelly Kristin Jones pull us in with repetition, asking us what can be learned from objects and images that may appear straightforward but when in multiples expand our knowledge of offered histories. Weaving, stitching, and layering are tactics used by Hale Ekinci to bring us into conversations about gendered labor and immigrant identity in a tactile web to notice every decision. Too Long; Didn’t Read offers a moment IRL (in real life) to slow down and witness what’s lost in our hightened attention culture and the urgency it demands. What can be found in that slowness and how can it change us?
