On Lamps, Making Art & Making Money

~ & my wonderful Nusprodukt collaboration ~

I am exhausted.

I mean almost nine months and we’re still going!!! We’re still in a fucking genocide and Palestinian babies are still getting blown into two as we recently witnessed during the horror that unleashed the Nuseirat Massacre last week which if you google now comes up as this, just straight up propaganda.

History is being re-written in real time as a “rescue operation…”

Who was rescued? 4 Israeli hostages

What was the price: 274 Palestinian civilians.

A few days ago, the nation-state of Israel tweeted that there was “an elephant in the room” because “many Gazan civilians” that participated in Oct 7th (they since deleted it, lol but the WAWOG Twitter archived it)… but what kind of moral denialism does one have to exist in to so blatantly manufacture consent for a genocide… in real-time?

Something my friend told me about narcissists yesterday is that they always accuse people of doing the things they are actually doing. It blew my mind because it’s what Israel has been doing since its conception, blaming Palestinians for exactly the things they are doing to them. It takes gaslighting to another level… because they believe not only in their victimhood but their right to violence because of it.

I’m working on a new Palestine-related dispatch, but until then…

We bear witness, organize, and learn how to resist in our own ways - whether through boycotts or civil disobedience… I know that it is our shared responsibility to not only get through this moment together, liberated and free, but to also simultaneously reimagine futures of survival and beauty, one where we can all exist together.

We know, as Paolo Freire taught us, that our oppressors will not free us. We must free ourselves. We must free ourselves. We must free ourselves.

photo from my personal image collection

I am seeing a lot of people fall into despair and instead of that I feel myself strengthening and rooting into the Earth, only like a Capricorn stellium would know how to do, and I’m stabilizing. I was once told by a healer that my strength is finding safety and grounding in the wild and messy because so much of my early life was finding rooting in the most unbearable and unstable of places, this makes me prescient for survival.

I often joke being ruled by Saturn makes you think work is a kink… and it’s true. Like, gimme something to do - I’ll fucking do it. I might take my time, but I’ll do it. And I thoroughly enjoy work. In the last few months I’ve been working on three new books (surprise!) and they feel pertinent to the times but it’s also the kind of writing that I enjoy the most, the thorough research-driven writing that leads you to strange encounters of illustrious characters through space and time.

A lot of my earlier projects were rushed due needing money. But now, in a post-October world, where the many industries we are in are failing us ethically and morally, when in any other circumstance there’d be a clear “red line” it’s become imperative to make art only in the way I want to.

That means not working with Zionists or Zionist apologists! Strangely - lost a lot of work for this delineation, but you know what - I’m OK with that!

As my friend Poppy Liu recently said on a panel held by the Palestine Festival of Literature and WAWOG LA, “They have us on blacklists but we also know who they are too, and we’re keeping our tabs as well.” You don’t realize how relieving this is. How relieving each time it is to just know or gain clarity on someone’s politics and where they actually stand. I don’t want to engage with Zionists anymore, as I’m just not interested in the but what ifs of a moral situation. We are 76 years far too gone. Before October, things were too blurry. People’s politics were more generously coached in liberal/leftist politics - the language of white supremacy maybe even abolition - without thinking about, I don’t know, about the mass incarceration rates of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons, held without trial. The “everything but Palestine” or the “everything but Muslims” rule has become so clear that I’m seeing that most people don’t really believe in the leftist politics that they say they espouse.

As I’ve written in past newsletters, this clarification has made me wonder about my future work… what is in the cards for me if I’m not going to take the traditional routes of making money when most of us who have platforms are forced to sell ourselves to make any money? Perhaps that’s why most influencers or celebrities haven’t said anything about Palestine or Congo or Sudan - they’re all bought by the genocides in Palestine and Congo and Sudan …that pay for the luxury life and cars and watches and brands and designers some idiotic dull witted person gave to silence them. Greed is cyclical & continues.

photos from my collection

A few years ago I did a campaign for Loro Piana. I said yes because I desperately wanted money to take care of myself… and after Who Is Wellness For? came out I was broke, having ravaged myself internally to write the book. As I write in the book, having a chronic illness means you have to actively take care of yourself by eating & living a certain way. I spent almost twenty year managing “flare ups” every couple of months but it was not until I reached 30 that I desperately needed things that felt like small but necessary: regular acupuncture, body work, therapy and a gym membership. Sadly all expensive things in the world we live in. So I took the job because I wanted money. I wanted the resources to take care of myself without relying on anybody else.

At the time, I was questioning myself and interrogating my desire for this. I felt there was a paradox here and I was worried it made me an unprincipled comrade because I wanted this job. Was I merely being seduced by capitalism? I knew it was more complex so I began to track these internal debates on Substack (they are all archived so you can revisit them on your own, have fuuuuuunnnn) but I ended up getting quite… ruined on Instagram for doing the campaign and trying to talk about capitalism in the midst of it. It got ugly. People were inordinately cruel. In retrospect, it remains kind of funny to me, after being publically bullied online a few times it’s clear how much truth is lost when people want to hate you. Yet, these questions still remain: how to make art, sustainably when you don’t come from money, and when you need, when you want money? There’s nobody that is going to come rescue me and give me the life I deserve, so how do I rescue myself, and give myself what I need?

(A great moment to plug this Newsletter, please, please, please become a paid subscriber you directly help me live and write! Any help is greatly appreciated!)

Fast forward to Nusprodukt.

A few years ago Sara Devic, the brilliant designer behind Nusprodukt reached out to me, after reading an essay where I wrote about the importance of nurturing and finding beautiful things in a world dominated by insatiable greed. Unfortunately I can’t find the essay anymore, but I remember that I was also speaking about excess, and how to find beauty when everything is overwrought by shitty labor standards and the deep grime of capitalism.

As my friend Gleb once told me, “Nobody is innocent under capitalism” but I admire people who are trying to actively challenge and broach that in their work.

Right off the jump, Sara told me about these lamps she was working on which she made out of recycled and found objects, and I was immediately in awe of the evident craftmanship as well as the vision. She sent me a lamp and I loved it so much we figured out a collaboration.

Nusprodukt in Serbian means “a by-product” and these lamps exist at the intersection of sculpture, assemblage, collectible design, and functional art, serving as a reflection on the ethos of upcycling and reuse. Sara says in her own words: “My practice underscores the importance of sustainability, starting with a shift in perception. These one-of-a-kind lamps that stem from my ability to recognize beauty and value where it was previously unseen. Through this approach, I challenge and disrupt conventional notions of beauty and value in regards to the material environment.”

If you read Twenty Things you know I’m a bit of a design nerd. I love art, but I am also invested in subverting what “art” is and who gets to make it. I have always wanted to make my own, but have struggled with - again & again - how to do this ethically? Yet we know that beauty is something that sustains us, because it sustains our humanity. I don’t think beauty has to be material, but I also know that we have always been people who traded objects and sourced inspiration for life from them.

I go back and forth between whether these things are vital or just socialized - but whenever I look at our ancestors and earlier civilizations, I see how these things were connective. How adornments and precious objects had validity and meaning. They were passed down and totemic, things had more weight when everything wasn’t a novelty. We must remember a time when all ritual was not lost, when adornments, those ancestral talismans had spiritual value. Our identities are soaked in those amulets too, we are people of the Earth, and thus her memory and civilizations is important. How we are in this material realm is important. How do we go back to this time when things were sacred?

Sara is an urban planner by trade, so she understands those structural limitations and dilemmas of working in an environment where bureaucracy creeps in. Writing for hire often feels like this and these days I struggle to write for other people, even though I mostly enjoy it, my mind is brimming with ideas about art and revolution. I don’t want to just write. So working on something creatively, like a lamp, helps me release my ideas in a different way.

There are 48 lamps total that are all one of a kind.

They’re all recycled objects fused together by brilliant Sara, each singularly hand built by her with devotion in Brooklyn. We are both Capricorn Suns, Cancer Moons and Risings (!!!) & I feel there’s something very clarifying about this collaboration for that reason.

Each lamp also comes with its own personalized Haiku written by yours truly that we made into a little shimmering art piece. Every detail was thought of and imagined and we used metallic green and pink paint to create that drip - shout out to Annabelle and Lizzy for helping me with making these.

As with everything I try to make there is a component of community. As I learn more about the Congo and our part in the genocide that is actively unfurling there (& has been for decades) 5% of each lamp sold will go to Friends of Congo. These are small ways we can create resources for one another in the face of such unjustness… but a reminder that mutual aid is not enough, complete systemic rehaul is. Free Congo!!!

Sara and I deliberated a lot over the price. We both wanted them somewhat “accessible” but the reality we kept facing is that a lamp like this could easily cost $1000 in most design stores. Still, we wanted something that would not break the bank (we are both artists who probably spend way too much money on other people’s art we can’t afford) but would also be enough money to honor the labor Sara did, as well as what I contributed. We are both immigrants to the U.S. trying to make something interesting, beautiful and adaptable that will help us potentially continue to rethink how we can re-create with what we already have. As a daughter from a lower income family with a mother who loved beautiful things but couldn’t afford anything, through her I became acquainted with flea markets and garage sales young... All people deserve beauty. What does it mean to make something that people will want to invest in and it have for a lifetime? Like an heirloom that can be passed down… I think this is the response to fast fashion or the inundation of things… to buy and support slower work… what if we returned to a time there were less things that had higher value - that supported the artist’s labor as well? Isn’t that revolutionary?

I have to admit, when I originally posted these lamps on IG someone wrote to me and told me that they would never charge so much for lamps they made. It made me sad, knowing how much we worked on this project (two years of work!) and how that was that person’s first and only comment. I also realized not everyone is tracking my work and seeing the sacrifices I’m making to make more honest work like this… it’s not easy to bet on yourself and hope that people will, too.

I still havent’ found a sustainable way of making enough money to take care of myself and help me continue making the work I need to make without working with brands or companies I don’t want to work with, that also will support my time being a full time organizer… so I would like to think my community - you! - will help and support me in this process. I know not everyone who likes my work will buy everything that I make or create. And there’s a beauty in that. There are 48 lamps and whoever gets them… gets them. Maybe you’ll get something else I make. This is how we can help support our communities stay principled & aligned. It’s up to us to help each other. I see this as a form of mutual aid when patrons no longer exist to fund the power in art.

So I would be so moved, so happy, if you would buy a lamp for yourself, or a lover, or a parent or family member, or someone that you love or you think will love these lamps, & send it to them!!! We worked hard on them, and at the very least, they deserve your attention. Here’s the link to all of them.

My mother is Libra, so was her father. Perhaps my inheritance from my mother is her love of beautiful things. How she tends to the garden despite the years of pain she’s inflicted and endured on herself and others, and how she has this easeful cadence and symposium with nature in a way I have found quite haunting and profound. So many of us pursuit beauty in others, ourselves, the world, I want to honor that reality and bring back the totems, the sacred, the beautiful things we protect and arm our homes with says the Cancer moon… beauty helps sustains revolutions, it propels us into a sacred dance with one another when we remember the things that sometimes can keep us alive. Deadass. I’m speaking from my own truth. And, why else are we alive but to make art and create new ways of thinking and imagining?

If you can’t buy a lamp, I also understand! I am beginning to trust that the universe will always give me what I need and these days I feel very held, despite still struggling in more ways than one. It’s a strange thing to surrender. So I do. I am grateful for all the people who have helped me make the work I have wanted to make over the years. I am so so so grateful, I love you all. Thank you <333