Annette Lemieux's A Display Of A Mackerel

In Manhattan, among a gallery in the Whitney Museum, I found a clean assembly of signs displaying photographs of fists raised high in the air. Annette Lemieux’s Left Right Left Right can be found tucked to the left of an archway, filling an entire wall with thirty placards portraying ten different photos, each printed three times. The array of wooden pickets displays all sorts of people, from historical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon to anonymous American citizens. Lemieux staggers the position of the pieces, providing the illusion of a conglomerate of signs as one group—reminiscent of a company of demonstrators. The striking gray scale of the work brings the viewer through history as they think about every protest,
In my effort to comprehend his thoughts, I imagined the world as city lights. Collectively, a city lights its entire sky, but if one light were to go out, while potentially unfortunate, little would change in the city’s brilliant luminosity. However, if only a few lights generate the majority of the urban glow, other brilliant lights will be outshined; and one burning out could cripple the infrastructure of the
Everyday, I see an increasing number of people with fantastically colored hair, mohawks upwards of 3 feet tall, and those who are embracing their gender or sexual identities by unashamedly being themselves. Without passing judgement, these acts make someone stand out, and standing out has become more desirable in our society. Just because someone is unique does not mean they aren’t part of a collective whole. As this change occurs, older people have taken to mistaking this kind of change as defecting from culture, leaving what is “normal” behind us, and disrupting the homeostasis of society. The fear is instinctive, Doty describes this phenomenon as “the mystery of being both an individual and part of a group” (Doty). It may initially appear a superficial contradiction, but this is the new norm. Accepting individuality as the natural state will still allow for the collective glory that Doty talks about as he discusses working together on something greater than oneself, so that losing a valuable individual doesn’t incite