Art Is Everything
Author | : Yxta Maya Murray |
Publisher | : Northwestern University Press |
Total Pages | : 281 |
Release | : 2021-01-15 |
ISBN-13 | : 9780810142930 |
ISBN-10 | : 0810142937 |
Rating | : 4/5 (37 Downloads) |
Download or read book Art Is Everything written by Yxta Maya Murray and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her funny, idiosyncratic, and propulsive new novel, Art Is Everything, Yxta Maya Murray offers us a portrait of a Chicana artist as a woman on the margins. L.A. native Amanda Ruiz is a successful performance artist who is madly in love with her girlfriend, a wealthy and pragmatic actuary named Xōchitl. Everything seems under control: Amanda’s grumpy father is living peacefully in Koreatown; Amanda is about to enjoy a residency at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and, once she gets her NEA, she’s going to film a groundbreaking autocritical documentary in Mexico. But then everything starts to fall apart when Xōchitl’s biological clock begins beeping, Amanda’s father dies, and she endures a sexual assault. What happens to an artist when her emotional support vanishes along with her feelings of safety and her finances? Written as a series of web posts, Instagram essays, Snapchat freakouts, rejected Yelp reviews, Facebook screeds, and SmugMug streams-of-consciousness that merge volcanic confession with eagle-eyed art criticism, Art Is Everything shows us the painful but joyous development of a mid-career artist whose world implodes just as she has a breakthrough.