WHY IS EVERYONE BREAKING UP NOW, a pop-up art installation dedicated to love and the aftermath of losing it, opened on Valentine’s Day. Artist, curator, and ITP Staff Member Blair Simmons channeled a broken heart into her own art and curated the show through an open call for submissions from other broken-hearted artists on Hinge.
Titled “WHY IS EVERYONE BREAKING UP RIGHT NOW?,” the art installation debuted at AllinOne Collective’s Portal at 164 20th Street in Brooklyn for one night only on Tuesday, February 14. The artists who contributed to the show found inspiration in the ashes of burnt relationships or lost loves, and were encouraged to experiment with mixed mediums – including but not limited to objects that remind the artist of the lost love, letters, trinkets, writings, sculptures, sketches, unfinished thoughts, photography, or mutations of the items left behind in the aftermath of love lost. Artist and educator Blair Simmons rashly joined a dating app, Hinge, in the days following her breakup with her partner of seven years. Realizing it was too soon to seriously begin swiping, she decided to transform her profile into an open call for an art show for other heartbroken souls. “It really does feel like everyone is breaking up. My home is filled with time capsules, fragments of a time past. This pain has to go somewhere, and I’m not the only one feeling this way,” says Simmons, “The show is designed to bring the disenfranchised together to grieve and channel their rage, pain, tears, or emptiness into something you can hold – a visual representation of the feelings you want to purge from your body. I look forward to bringing this community of lost souls together, together we might take the steps we need towards healing and closure.”
Blair Simmons is a queer + anxious artist, researcher, storyteller, and technician working in as many mediums as will have her. Her research often materializes into objects and performances which have been performed at the likes of Blanc Gallery, Pioneer Works, La Mama’s CultureHub, Wordhack at Babycastles and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has taught at CultureHub’s CoLab, Harlem School of the Arts, Children's Museum of the Arts and is currently teaching at NYU’s ITP/IMA.