Michelle Handelman
“I make films to occupy my time. If I were strong enough to do nothing I wouldn’t do anything at all. You have no idea how weak I am.” Hustlers & Empires, Michelle Handelman
I selected my project Hustlers & Empires because it’s a meditation on what one does when trying to deal with unbearable loss. It looks at transgression as a form of survival, and asks–how do we construct meaning when living in communities outside the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy?
Who is the most vulnerable right now? Trans people, queer artists, people of color, women forced into isolation with their abusers, the incarcerated. And for those of us who lived through the horrors of the AIDS outbreak we find ourselves yet again, helping one another survive. Who was the first person you reached out to? Who do you call every week, every day? We have been failed by our government, but this pandemic reminds us that we do not fail each other.
Hustlers & Empires, 2018, Chromogenic Print, 48 x 38 inches
LOVER HATER CUNTY INTELLECTUAL, 2019, Chromogenic Print, 20 x 31 inches
Hustlers & Empires, 2018/20, Production Still, Chromogenic Print, 36 x 18 inches, Photo: Mr. Means
Hustlers & Empires, 2018, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Installation Documentation. Photo courtesy Don Ross, SFMOMA
Hustlers & Empires, 2018, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Performance Documentation. Photo courtesy Charlie Villyard, SFMOMA
BECAUSE IF THERE IS NO PAIN IT WILL ALL BE FORGOTTEN, 2019, Chromogenic Print, 20 x 31 inches
Hustlers & Empires, 2018/20, Production Still, Chromogenic Print, 20 x 24 inches. Photo: Mr. Means
Michelle Handelman
All images courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols