Happy Tuesday hotties! I’m late again because my ass is too fat it slows me down. We’re less than a week away from the first Rat Depot screening and I’m looking forward to meeting some of you there! We have big plans for the future and I hope you’ll be a part of it. I’d like to invite you to become a regular contributor to Rat Depot - whether you’re a writer, DJ, photographer, filmmaker, you name it - if you’d like to become a regular voice, give me a message! This newsletter is written for free every week and I don’t earn anything from doing it. If you enjoy collaboration for the sake of collaboration, or you’re a budding creator who wants a home to talk about things, Rat Depot could hit the spot for you.
Whether it’s joining me on the long-neglected podcast, doing DJ mixes, having a letter for yourself once a month, submitting your own work, working on events with me or something else entirely, I’d love to chat to you! There are no bad ideas. When I started Rat Depot, I wanted it to be as collaborative as possible and we’re getting there but I’d love for the depot to be more than one voice, a lovely chorus of different people with different perspectives. It’s not a job, but if you think you’d enjoy contributing to some degree and making new friends, please don’t be a stranger.
paulieratdepot@gmail.com
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Nigerian artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby makes art which explores “the spaces where disparate cultures overlap”. Living in Enugu, Nigeria until the age of sixteen, Akunyili Crosby then moved to the United States, where they still reside. A mix of mediums, acrylic, pencil and collage help weave in textures, images and colours from both homes to stunning effect. My favourite piece is above, Garden Thriving. I like how the sharp, blocky lines and colours of the architecture contrast with the layers of flora which vary in opacity to overlap each other and create a romantic backdrop to a moment of intimacy between the two subjects.
In each of Akunyili Crosby’s works, there is a clear love for the subject and for their environment, which evokes a nostalgia for something inaccessible, a diasporic landscape of faces and places. The men in Akunyili Crosby’s work are often in vulnerable, relaxed positions, cradled by women.
Thread (above) captures a scene between two lovers, the collage seemingly transferring onto the skin of the other person, as if the very essence of their lover is being shared in that moment. The Nigerian hairstyle on show is an example of Irun Kiko, a Yoruba term meaning “to gather hair”. The style above is quite literally called the pineapple, because it looks like a flipping pineapple! The piece itself is perhaps named in reference to this hairstyle, which is achieved by knotting the hair with thread. Drawing connections between the loving act of knotting hair in this style, the historic tradition of this being done by people in your tribe or immediate family and the act of caressing and kissing another, who is marked and changed by you, heightens the deep romantic subtext of the work.
As with many of Akunyili Crosby’s works, the face of the man is obscured or erased in some way, the title of the work above suggesting this is a deliberate subversion that elevates the portrait of the woman, who stares back at us. It is the women that are central to each work. As they each collide romantically with others, their collages spill over onto the furniture, onto fabric, onto skin.
You can view more on Akunyili Crosby’s website, here.
Joseph Cornell
There are two distinct places where you are more likely to be called a lonely virgin who lives in his mums house; a Call of Duty lobby circa 2013, or the mid-twentieth century New York art scene. The former, if you’re me and the latter if happen to be Joseph Cornell. Born in 1903 in Nyack, New York (sounds like a Nicki Minaj ad-lib) Joseph Cornell grew up in the working-class neighbourhood of Flushing, losing his father at a young age. He would grow up and spend his entire adult life living with his mother and his brother Robert, who lived with cerebral palsy. What set Cornell apart from his contemporaries, was that he never really went anywhere else.
An introverted hermit, a sexually repressed loner, a romantic, a bright-eyed creative, Cornell was all of these things. The man struggled to ever have a lasting relationship with a woman, he never left New York, let alone the USA and shied away from the business side of the art world, never really prospering from his work to the degree he could have done. He routinely gave away his work to women he admired but had no chance of being with, such as Audrey Hepburn who received An Owl From Ondine (a reference to her role in the 1954 Broadway adaptation of Ondine) from Cornell in 1954, which was promptly returned back to him as it made little sense to the young actress.
But what Cornell did truly love and understand, was New York City. The man was obsessed with spending his free time exploring the city, its parks, flea markets and galleries. As such, Cornell was constantly bringing back trinkets, bits and bobs, jars and thread and textures, materials that became the essence of his artistic practice. A man that was very in tune with his city and the artists and trends that moved through it, but a man self-exiled, a man boxed in by his own inhibitions. A man who lived in a box, who transcribed the world around him, through boxes. The one above, depicts the actress and dancer Tilly Losch, another crush of our man Joey. But they weren’t all objects of desire -
Cassiopeia #1 is a seemingly innocuous collection of materials and items that sort of resembles a Pixies album cover. But upon closer inspection, the work is a replication of the Cassiopeia constellation of stars, retold through Cornell’s love for found objects and collage.
Palace reminds me of a Wes Anderson miniature, the hotel itself a 2D facade, backed by branches which are amplified by the mirror backing, which provides depth to the background by amplifying the foliage. Cornell’s ability to create so much in so little space was recognised by his peers. He was friends with many of the scenes biggest artists, from Duchamp to Sontag. Salvador Dali - you may remember him from a previous letter when he was trying to fuck HR Giger’s girlfriend, or just generally from being one of the most famous artists ever - was present at a screening of one of Cornell’s short films, which made him irrationally jealous as he proceeded to knock over the projector, encouraging Cornell to go back to making boxes. Cornell was so mortified by the interaction that he rarely exhibited his films thereafter, shrinking back into himself as he often did.
But Cornell’s most fascinating relationship, was with Yayoi Kusama. The pair met in 1962 and maintained a “passionately romantic yet platonic” friendship until Cornell passed away in 1972. They would stay on the phone for hours, exchange letters and drawings of each other. Kusama had a complicated relationship to sex, traumatised from discovering her father having an affair with another woman as a young child. More brutally, Cornell’s mother had repressed any sexual urges Cornell may have felt throughout his life, once throwing a bucket of cold water on Cornell and Kusama as they kissed under a tree. As an adult, Cornell may have struggled to translate his feelings for women into actions that worked within the fragile and toxic framework of his mothers approval.
Nevertheless, this relationship with Kusama was what Cornell seemed to have been craving his entire life. Companionship, on his terms. It is interesting that while Kusama used her polkadots as a connection to the infinite, Cornell expressed a hermetic love for his city with his boxes. One found comfort in the infinite abyss, the other could not fathom the unknown. Whatever their creative differences, however they navigated the void that life invites us to fill, the pair found comfort in each other, birds of a feather.
That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this letter on different types of love and how they shape us. I had another section planned (no spoilers) but Substack has told me to log off and touch grass as once again, we are out of email space before we hit the dreaded “[clipped email]”. There is nothing more evil, more craven, than a clipped email. Pray to your god that you never see one.
By the time we next speak, we will have concluded our first ever screening, I’m twirling my hair around and giggling just thinking about it. See you on the other side rat family.
Love,
Paulie xx
ps - if you’d like to be official rat staff (maybe i’ll get badges made) - give me a dm or an email or just leave a comment? Let’s make some cool shit together.