Better Late Than Never

At Spill Think Tank in May 2023, I presented Better Late Than Never, a performance-lecture on mid-career malaise – the regret, grief and envy that crop up when contemplating the gap between the life you imagined and the one you’re living – accompanied by Age Piece, a pop-up ‘retrospective’ of my artistic trajectory to date.

Overlapping humour and pathos, Better Late Than Never unpacked the emotional cocktail that attends midlife, drawing from feminist scholarship, pop psychology, art history and the accounts of artists, including Felicity Allen on her concept of the disoeuvre, and Rita Keegan on resilience in the face of institutional indifference, among others. Historian of science Susanne Schmidt’s writing on the midlife crisis was also instrumental; she argues that the phenomenon originated not as male escapism but as a feminist demand for egalitarian gender roles to ensure a fulfilling work-life balance. Mid-life struggle is actually about care, precarity and structural exclusion, not individual failure!

The installation was inspired by Jonathan Borofsk’s Age Piece from 1972, which he made to document and reflect on his changing oeuvre, Borofsky was 30 years old when he made it. I was 45. His work was exhibited at The Whitney Museum in NY. So, anyway…

I sent a fan e-mail to Borofsky to let him know I was making my own version of his Age Piece. In my message, I asked him if he could recall how he felt when he made it, if he thought his best work was behind or ahead of him. And he responded: “I’ve rarely had pessimistic or optimistic views as to how my work might proceed into the future. It has always seemed to me that I’m just caught in the flow of a river – sometimes a bumpy ride – and sometimes smooth sailing.” So now I envy his copacetic attitude in addition to his gallery representation, accolades and accomplishments.