Paintings and Pop • Ava Amedi

these walls will be standing in the end,
cause we’re not things, we’re events

We’re together, and everything is happening so much. The pulse of our moment is marked by a jump-cut of styles, our taste propelled by movements and rhythms and short-term employment contracts, theories and textiles and baths of data. It tells us where we stand, who we want to be, what’s next, what's hot, what needs to be left behind. Phone launches and album launches and gallery openings and everything is on fire, especially time.

trying to turn every death hole into a glimmer

beauty, beauty, beauty
it’s like waiting all over you

More than ever, and forever for now, we connect to and share the pulse with Pop music. Its allure is its central challenge - to affect audiences within tight constraints of runtime, catchy hooks and lyrics that marry specific detail with themes that feel universal, overwhelming emotions used to draw something hyper-real.

in heavier homes,
justice is a birthright if you’re made right

and it was bold
to be touched by your crying over canned soup

We accelerate things; Pop is incubated to ubiquity in micro Airdrop networks, TikTok covers, club mixes, label promo rollouts, artist performances for streaming service executives, corporate sponsorship, fandoms. Hooks becoming entire songs, songs becoming landmarks for us to gather; the music’s continued existence relying on our repurposing it, perpetuating it.

cruelly, truly, truly
and it’s like making love to you

An ability to produce effect within tight constraints is key to the work’s allure. A blend of hyper-specific embracing figures, skin tones and dom-power alongside pinks, blues, what could be a sock or a foot. Movement becoming hyper-real, Ambera Wellmann’s artworks can be found living like Pop songs. They pulse as we do: unfurling and dissolving and turning into one-another. In this affinity we repurpose and reimagine, allowing concrete details to become our own: stories and anxieties of becoming undone, power, cats hanging around creepily during sex. These details trigger memories how evocative Pop does, allowing us movement through time, breaking it for a brief moment.

“Mainstream music is not exclusive, it’s not elitist. And those are standards I want to maintain in my music.”

—SOPHIE

For my non-mob followers - do you identify as a settler? If not, why?
— Nayuka (@NayukaGorrie) July 24, 2019

!! i find it's basically always so much more productive to treat ~identity labels~ as describing processes and interactions as opposed to fixed states. verbs do so much more than nouns & adjectives
— Lonelyspeck (@lonelyspeck) July 24, 2019

these walls will be standing in the end
cause we’re not things, we’re events

We’re together, and everything is happening so much. It seems we’ve entered the expanded field before, felt it when meeting diaspora at the landmark of a melody. We can move beyond our limb’s limits, becoming figures that blur instead of end. But before that, we have a responsibility to time and how it comes to settle us. The expanded field feels like we’re unfurling, dissolving, turning into one-another; living, living, living.

A scan of Ambera Wellman’s Pastoral artwork accompanied by curvy markings drawn by the author, and the text ‘how did this become what I’m trying to say

in heavier homes
justice is a birthright if you’re made right

and it was bold
to be touched by your crying over canned soup

these bold-blood rights are coal promised from gold
an air fryer burning the roof off

yo jona, yo jona, hindo jona
trying to turn every death hole into a glimmer

cruelly, truly, truly
and it's like making love to you

beauty beauty beauty
It’s like waiting all over you

weights untold, carry you alone
inserting bliss into heavenly homes

I was told we’d be all alone,
that’s why I brought all these hole filled stones

Image:

Ambera Wellmann, Pastoral 2019
(scan, annotations by the author), oil on linen, 56.0 x 51.0 cm,
Private collection, Belgium