Picture & Prose

It’s worth a reminder that advertising has long flirted with the aesthetics of collective activism, stirring our inner insecurities and hopes for a better future with the purchase of a perfect ice cold beverage. While it is easy to lament the mis-steps of Kendall Jenner, no stranger to the exploitation of personal or collective fame, one might do better to examine a history of advertising designed to co-opt and manipulate idealism.

These proximities and distances are at times difficult to reconcile, bringing into view the incommensurable economies of the image. I own two of Abongile’s drawings; I am not his only collector. I wonder what the work would perform if placed inside one of the exhibition spaces. Would this disrupt the fragile economy in which it already exists?

Today adjective presents the first installation of Picture & Prose, a new section dedicated to experimental writing that takes it cue from an image of the authors choosing.

Here’s Rosa Lyster: “I couldn’t work or write or do anything normal at all. I was fully, fully convinced that I had fucked up my entire life. I knew this was not rational, but I could not help it. ‘Why didn’t you try and get a job?’ you say. No. If I tried to get a job, I would fail, and then everyone would know that I was doomed”.