The set was not really a set. It was a living room that someone had pointed a camera at — two armchairs angled toward each other, a rug that looked like it had been chosen by someone who actually liked rugs, a bookshelf in the background with real books on it, the spines turned out. The kind of setup that said we are not trying very hard in a way that had clearly required considerable effort.
Elena liked it immediately.
The host was Priya Menon — twenty-eight, based in Chicago, seventy thousand subscribers and the specific energy of someone who had decided a long time ago that interviews should feel like conversations and had simply refused to conduct them any other way. She'd reached out three weeks ago. Elena had said yes mostly because the email hadn't had a single bullet point in it, which she'd taken as a good sign.
The kind of setup that said we are not trying very hard in a way that had clearly required considerable effort.
"Okay, we're live," Priya said, settling into her chair with a mug of something. "Hi everyone. I'm here with Elena — artist, sister of a famous person, and apparently someone who has very strong opinions about gallery submission portals."
Elena laughed. "Already? We're starting there?"
"We're starting there."
"Okay. Yes. The portal." Elena pulled her feet up onto the chair, which she'd asked if she could do and Priya had said obviously. "I'm going to say something that I think a lot of artists feel but don't say because they're scared of being blacklisted. The submission portal for the Harmon Open Call — and I will say the name, I don't care — resets your attachments if you navigate away from the page. Just. Resets them. Gone. You have to re-upload everything."
"No."
"Three times, Priya. I uploaded my portfolio three times."
"That's a hate crime."
"It is! It genuinely is!" Elena was already laughing. "And there's no save function. There's no are you sure you want to leave this page. You just — gone. Thirty pieces of work. Gone."
"Did you submit in the end?"
"I did submit, yes. On the fourth try. At one in the morning. With my brother standing behind me going—" She dropped her voice to a low flat tone. "'Just screenshot everything first.' Which is good advice that I did not take until the third time."
"Smart man."
"He has his moments." She said it warmly, the particular warmth of someone who meant it completely.
✻ ✻ ✻
Priya leaned forward. "Okay so tell me about the work itself. Because I've seen the pieces you've posted and I have questions."
"Ask."
"The series with the hands. The one where the hands are doing — I don't even know how to describe it. They're doing ordinary things but the scale is wrong."
"Yes." Elena's face shifted into the expression she got when she was actually talking about work — more focused, the playfulness still there but underneath it something more serious. "So the whole series started because I was watching my brother wrap his hands before training. And I've seen him do it a thousand times, it's completely normal to me, but that day I was really looking at it and I thought — the way he treats his hands is so specific. They're a tool. He's protecting a tool. And then I thought about all the ways we use our hands without thinking about them, all the ordinary violence of just — existing with a body."
"Ordinary violence," Priya repeated. "I love that."
"Right? Because it's not dramatic. It's just — you open a jar. You type too hard. You carry something heavy and your knuckles go white." Elena gestured with her own hands as she talked, unconsciously. "And I wanted to make that visible. So I made the scale wrong on purpose. You look at a hand doing something small — buttoning a coat, holding a pen — and because it's enormous it suddenly looks significant. It demands to be taken seriously."
"Have you always made work like this? Things that make you look twice?"
Elena tilted her head. "I think I've always looked twice at things. Whether I made work about it is a different question." She smiled. "For a long time I made work that I thought other people would like. Which is — I mean, it's fine, it's how you learn, but it's also a very good way to make very mediocre things."
"When did that change?"
"Honestly? The Bloodless thing." She said it easily, no edge in it, just a fact. "When all of that happened — the report, the broadcast, everything getting picked apart publicly — I was so angry. Like, properly furious. And I started making work out of the anger, just to have somewhere to put it, and the work was — it was actually good? Like, it surprised me. Turns out I make better things when I stop caring whether anyone likes them."
Priya laughed. "That's going to be a pull quote."
"Use it. I stand by it."
✻ ✻ ✻
"Okay I have to ask about the Mercer," Priya said. "Because you posted about it and then deleted the post and the internet noticed."
Elena covered her face with her hands. "I knew this was coming."
"You brought it up in the portal rant—"
"I brought up portals, Priya, I did not bring up the Mercer specifically—"
"You implied—"
"I implied nothing." Elena was laughing again, properly now, the kind that scrunched her nose. "Okay fine. The Mercer. They rejected my submission. Before you ask — yes, they opened the email. No, they did not open the attachments. I have the read receipts."
"Elena."
"I know."
"That's insane."
"It is insane! And I posted about it and then I deleted it because I don't actually want to start a beef with a gallery before I've even shown anywhere—"
"Very mature—"
"I'm extremely mature, thank you, I deleted it within four hours—"
"That's not mature, that's just deleting something after you've already said it—"
"Priya." Elena pointed at her. "You are not my therapist."
"I could be—"
"You could not." But she was still laughing. She let it settle, drank some of the tea someone had brought her at the start that she'd forgotten about until now, and looked at the camera for a second in the comfortable way of someone who'd decided to be here and was actually here. "The Mercer thing was annoying. I'm over it. There are other galleries. There are other walls. My work exists whether or not someone with a frosted glass door decides to open an attachment."
"That's the spirit."
"That is the spirit." A beat. "I'm still a little annoyed."
"That's also fine."
"Thank you. I thought so."
✻ ✻ ✻
Near the end, Priya said: "Last question and it's a good one, I promise."
"You've been promising that for an hour."
"This time I mean it." Priya tucked her legs up, mirroring Elena's posture. "What do you want people to take away from your work? Like if someone sees it — really sees it — what do you want them to feel?"
Elena was quiet for a moment. Not uncomfortably — just actually thinking about it, giving it the weight it deserved.
"I want them to feel like they were seen," she said. "Not their best version. Not their most Instagram-able moment. Just; the ordinary version. The version that opens jars and carries heavy things and wraps its hands before something hard." She paused. "I think a lot of art asks you to be elevated. To feel significant. And I like that sometimes. But what I actually want to make is the thing that says; you were already significant. Before any of this. Just by existing in a body and moving through the world with it." She smiled. "That's it. That's all I want."
Priya looked at her for a moment.
"Okay," she said. "That was a good answer."
"I know," Elena said. "I had it ready."
Priya laughed. "You did not."
"I absolutely did not," Elena agreed.
✻ ✻ ✻
The stream ended at just under ninety minutes. Priya's producer gave them a thumbs up through the camera and Elena uncurled from the chair and stretched and said that was actually really fun and meant it.
Priya walked her to the door.
"Can I have you back when you have a show?"
"When I have a show," Elena said, "you're the first call."
She walked out into the Chicago afternoon with her bag on her shoulder and her phone already buzzing; Raul had been watching the stream and had texted a single message, no words.
She understood to mean he'd heard the bit about the hand-wrapping and was having feelings about it.
She texted back a shrug emoji and kept walking, and the city did its afternoon thing around her, and for a few blocks she didn't think about galleries or portals or Delaney Schulz or any of it.
Just the light, and her hands, and the ordinary significance of moving through the world with a body.
✻ ✻ ✻
You were already significant. Before any of this.
> Chapter complete. The ordinary significance. Continue to next chapter? [Y/N]