It’s Thursday afternoon, and everything is almost ready for me to go. I don’t actually even know how I got to this moment, where my large suitcase is full, on the floor in my living room, waiting for me to grab it, jump on a coach, and wake up tomorrow morning in London.
But from tomorrow, for 3 days, I will be doing / performing / making / showing … my before nothing in a gallery in London, at The Crypt.
There have been back and forth of emails and plans, and cancellation of plans due to lack of funding, and then finding of funds, more emails, and here I am.
Scared.
I had actually a mini-freaking out moment yesterday and I am having a sort of mini-meltdown today because I am scared. What if people are coming to see my work, and they don’t like it? What if they find it boring? What if they find me pretentious? and Not ready? And provincial and common? What if this beautiful idea I had in my mind turns out to be just pure and simple shit? I am not worried about people not coming! I am worried about taking too long of a step in a direction which maybe does not belong to me. I am scared of being cast aside, repudiate, publicly shamed. Denigrated.
I am not scared of being ignored, I am too used to that.
Still, I will be going down there and will try to make the best thing I can with what I have. Yesterday I was talking to my colleague M. and I had to admit that I do feel lonely: going down there alone, creating, making, planning, writing, accepting, booking, buying, making, creating, taking down, travelling, … it is all alone. Making and critiquing. All alone.
I have asked the usual people for assistance, and the usual people, because they are the usual people, have let me down, again.
And I have to write this, because making art and being an artist involves also a lot of emotions and this is part of the whole process. It is not just drawing and painting.
Anyway, I have everything ready. I have also created some ads which are online:
on CURATORSPACE : https://www.curatorspace.com/events
on LONDON ART NEWS : http://www.londonartnews.co.uk/before-nothing/
on my website : https://www.matildetomat.com/before-nothing
and as a facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/516975549195345/
Here is the page of The Crypt: http://cryptgallery.org/
So, I am going. I don’t know what is going to happen and the results.
I am just going.