Michelle Shengyu Li

In Response to Explanation


Engraved paper

9.5 x 11 in
2024




In Response to Explanation (Short: It is a privilege.)


Secrets, oh secrets…

I am not interested in the lie; secrecy should not be conflated with dishonesty.

I am speaking to what is purposely left unsaid, what you can choose to believe or not, what you may not ever know.

I look to Black womanist artist E. Jane’s NOPE Manifesto:

“We need more people, we need better environments, we need places to hide, we need utopian demands, we need culture that loves us.”

I have made the decision to restrict access from a dominant culture that may not yet understand me, yet demands my visibility. Here, I hold the politics of visibility and ephemera. Through the curls of temptation, I directly speak of the existence of these secrets in the other room. I am choosing to make places to hide where we can gather, reckoning with protection as privacy, letting you into the room so you can decide how you would listen to its walls. (How does it feel?) An explanation is just its call.

I wonder if it’s too early for me to understand as well. I just know that I have been whistling to the wind, imitating bird’s calls, teased by the thought that someone may overhear my whispers.

You will not define me before I do. You will not take what I have yet to meet.

I submit myself to something I cannot see. I surrender to unintelligibility – the abstract, the unknown, the unrealized, the wish, the dream.

My favourite secrets to hold are the ones that I, myself, do not yet know.