THE SCIENCE OF STRESS STRESS IN SOCIETY
ItÕs said that misery loves company,
but apparently so does hope. That
was a driving theme of the 2018 art
installation “A Monument for the
Anxious and Hopeful” that artists
Candy Chang and James Reeves
staged at the Rubin Museum of
Art in New York City. The ambitious
project invited visitors to fill out
cards and complete the sentences
“I’m anxious because . . .” or “I’m
hopeful because . . .” More than
55,000 responses covered a wall of
the museum, and some of the more
powerful responses for the anxiety
cards included “Because things
don’t always get better with time,”
“I’m afraid of being yelled at online”
and “I worry that my son will relapse.”
On the hopeful side, encouraging
responses balanced the scale with
statements such as “I’m ready to
fall in love again,” “People believe in
my voice” and “I’ve survived all of my
worst days.”
Clearly the artists had tapped
into a need to share our fears and
expectations.“We’re living through
a uniquely unsettled moment of
technological, political and social flux
that affects each of us in personal,
specific ways,” says Chang, whose
work focuses on participatory public
art. “As we each wrestle with our
own private anxieties and desires
for the future, perhaps it might offer
some measure of reassurance to see
the ways others are reckoning with
tomorrow’s uncertainty. In these days
of increasing anxiety, loneliness and
tribalism, we believe creating local
infrastructure for the soul is more
important than ever.”
Chang and Reeves are working on
archiving the responses in the hopes
of eventually collecting them in book
format. And they aim to stage the
installation again in other locations.
Says Reeves, “We hope projects like
this one can help people feel less
isolated or weird or broken when they
see that everyone is wrestling with
dark material.”—RICH SANDS