If you were born after 1979 and before 1988, you must be a twenty-something. Twenty-somethings weren’t around for the Kennedy assassination. Didn’t gape at the Watergate scandal. Didn’t cheer on the space race. But these people born between the years of 1979 and 1988, will shape the future, despite not being around for the past.
What defines this demographic? What qualities are projected onto 20-somethings or what are 20-somethings projecting? What does it mean to be in this tender age of budding adulthood? Are we young, and naive, or grown and insightful? And if we addressed this in our art (do we address this in our art?), what would it look like?
So said Spudnik Press of Chicago, Illinois in the spring of 2009, announcing a print exchange for artists in their twenties. They asked only that submissions be by an artist between 20 and 29, and that the piece be of a print medium. In the midst of a pretty tough 22nd year of my life, this felt like fate. My life was such that it felt that I was toeing the a fine line of stability--financial and emotional. In such a fragile state of mind, it seemed that if the wind blew the wrong way, I would crumble. So a house of cards felt more than appropriate. Spudnik even used my piece on their promotional material for the opening, which was quite nice.
pictured: screen print on postal paper; "My house of cards"
