Lidia Lidia
‘The Waiting Room’(2020)
Photographic series
An activist as well as an artist, Lidia Lidia has always used consciousness-raising as a core part of her practice. “The goal of each artwork has been to attract enough attention to motivate and inspire the audience to know more,” she writes of her past work, “and to act towards changes that can improve the future to make it fairer with justice and equality for everyone.”
During lockdown, however, she grew frustrated over the public’s refusal to learn the facts, opting instead for light entertainment and/or being told what they wanted to hear, ignoring the repeated warnings that for centuries we have been driving our planet towards destruction such as this.
For Lidia, the quarantine has been an emotional journey, a crisis as to whether there is any meaning in producing new work when so many viewers seem deaf to her activism. ‘The Waiting Room’ is her response to this internal conflict – a connection between her past work and where she would like to go which, at the moment, “involves lots of colours, dressing up and being at least a bit more playful… using all the outfits I have accumulated since I was 10 years old and have never had the time to wear”.
The work, featuring her friend and collaborator Mr SlimBones, mediates upon this response, exploring the ‘insane circus’ that has been 2020 and questioning whether humankind will ever emerge from the waiting room of our own destruction. She says, “I am still not sure what the truth behind the Covid-19 apocalypse is, but I am sure that one day, somewhere and somehow, this truth will emerge. It is just a matter of waiting...”. And in this waiting, we might one day wake to discover that we too have become Mr Slimbones, our lives lost to the performance that is human life, too late to open our eyes, and act.
During lockdown, however, she grew frustrated over the public’s refusal to learn the facts, opting instead for light entertainment and/or being told what they wanted to hear, ignoring the repeated warnings that for centuries we have been driving our planet towards destruction such as this.
For Lidia, the quarantine has been an emotional journey, a crisis as to whether there is any meaning in producing new work when so many viewers seem deaf to her activism. ‘The Waiting Room’ is her response to this internal conflict – a connection between her past work and where she would like to go which, at the moment, “involves lots of colours, dressing up and being at least a bit more playful… using all the outfits I have accumulated since I was 10 years old and have never had the time to wear”.
The work, featuring her friend and collaborator Mr SlimBones, mediates upon this response, exploring the ‘insane circus’ that has been 2020 and questioning whether humankind will ever emerge from the waiting room of our own destruction. She says, “I am still not sure what the truth behind the Covid-19 apocalypse is, but I am sure that one day, somewhere and somehow, this truth will emerge. It is just a matter of waiting...”. And in this waiting, we might one day wake to discover that we too have become Mr Slimbones, our lives lost to the performance that is human life, too late to open our eyes, and act.