OPENING SALVO // Eyes in the Sky, and on the Prize

Skid #3 by Janos Korodi

by Heather Shayne Blakeslee

EXCERPT //

“At the feet of America’s beloved Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbor, the Emma Lazarus poem ‘The New Colossus’ enshrines her as ‘The Mother of Exiles.’ 

Whether your family was Native American, forced from your own land by the new European settlers; whether your family arrived here only recently or came here centuries ago to flee persecution, to find better opportunity, or by force of the slave trade or indentured servitude; whether your family came here with great wealth, or only with what they could carry; there is a way in which we are all family, that we are all brothers and sisters. Compatriots. That must be true for a country to function.

You may have noticed occasionally that families—even when a great, fierce, love is present, when respect ungirds your relationship, and when you share the same values—are prone both to silence when it means we might avoid a conflict, and also to some absolutely colossal fights. 

Of late, there has been a bit more tempest than is good for any of us, and certainly more than our democracy may be able to continue to withstand.

Does that seem hyperbolic to you? Naive? Overwrought? It likely does to some, but take a peek at Poland, perhaps, or have a hard look at Hungary—and certainly examine our own nation in the mirror—and it might tell you otherwise. If you’re simply used to a reflection that shows you how robust America’s Constitution is, how elegant our system of checks and balances, how patriotic our citizenry, just how truly, truly, exceptional we are, it may be time to view the world through a newly arrived immigrant’s eyes, and through the lens of history.

For painter Janos Korodi, whose recent work was spurred by a decision to leave Hungary and its crumbling democracy, he has come to see that any populace might be lulled, so long as the changes are slow enough, so long as the message is crafted to reflect the opposite of what’s happening, and as long as there is a distrust that can sow further division. In one of his series of paintings of open roads stretching out to the horizon, a meditation on his exile, the eyes in the plywood he’s painted on float above the expanse. It gives on one hand the illusion of movement and freedom, and on the other a set of watchful eyes disguised as clouds. Perhaps just the government. Perhaps your co-worker or neighbor. Perhaps the self-censor that comes to replace both. Authoritarianism comes in many forms.” 

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