Holding: Democracy, Play and the Public in Erin Hayden’s “Hold Me” at UIS Visual Art Gallery

“We may infer that holding environments are necessary, in particular, to democratic life, especially if we extend Winnicott’s and Arendt’s accounts to think specifically in terms of public things.” ¹

-Bonnie Honig

I sit and I am held by my chair, which in turn is held by the floor and the walls and the beams of the building that hold together the structure of the space in the apartment complex I call home. Moving outward I acknowledge the space being held in a grid that is held in an infrastructure that holds me. The space where I am located and currently seated is part of a body of things, which reaching outward become public—it is here I find many more arms reaching to hold and fighting the urge to let go (from the weight of these things) in the endless struggle for democratic life.

Yesterday, I entered the University of Illinois Springfield Visual Arts Gallery, a public university, to see seventeen, arguably eighteen, paintings made by the Illinois artist Erin Hayden in her solo show titled, “Hold Me.” These seventeen paintings all have one thing in common—each appropriates a funerary card for Abraham Lincoln that depicts Lincoln being held in the arms of the first president of the United States of America, George Washington. The original funerary card insinuates that Washington is welcoming Lincoln into heaven with a warm, maybe even congratulatory embrace. There is space for multiple interpretations in this image as it cultivates ambiguity, pliability, and the concrete action of holding, which is by nature always active through both metaphor and embodiment.

The University of Illinois Springfield was originally established in 1969 as the Sangamon State University. The first president of the university, Robert C. Spencer, addressed the intentions of the university to engage the public in a message describing a threefold mandate for the institution, the third of which proposes that “these programs reveal a curriculum so designed that students, faculty, and the community may address themselves in appropriate ways to the public problems besetting our society and civilization.” ² In some ways how Hayden’s exhibit “Hold Me” can be seen in dialogue with what Honig calls a necessary holding environment and what Spencer refers to as an addressing of one’s self to public problems besetting our society and civilization—through play, paint, metaphor, puns, and a hopeful warm embrace.

Erin Hayden. “Easy there stock” 2018. 20” x 14”, mixed-media on digitally dyed fabric (installation view) UIS Visual Arts Gallery, University of Illinois Springfield. Courtesy of UIS Visual Art Gallery. Photo: Erin Hayden.

Located in the state capitol of the Land of Lincoln, the University of Illinois Springfield’s Visual Arts Gallery is an ideal place to hang a show of paintings that celebrate the life of the sixteenth president of the United States. If you have spent any time in this Springfield, then you are surely aware of the magnitude of references to Lincoln that adorn the city. In this vein, to a resident of Springfield or vacationer who has stopped for a coffee and perused the antique shop nearby, the image may function in a monotonous fashion. This is where play first enters the premise of Hayden’s initial concept giving a push to her body of work. Play is important from the get-go because the tongue and cheek accessibility of the work is what engages the viewer. Play often affords us questions that allow for seemingly meaningful and possibly meaningless associations in which we negotiate and situate ourselves, distributing varying degrees of care.

Erin Hayden. “Honey, it’ll be alright” (left) and “I need some chocolate” (right), 2018. 20” x 14”, mixed-media on digitally dyed fabric (installation view) UIS Visual Arts Gallery, University of Illinois Springfield. Courtesy of UIS Visual Art Gallery. Photo: Erin Hayden.

I think what Hayden is doing, with play, is important because of its push towards criticality that relates to a never ending need for the public to constantly be reflecting on itself in an active effort to push forward and maintain its being in democracy, in holding, and in action. Hayden begins making this work by playing with images found on the Internet and digitally manipulating them. After these are printed and stretched Hayden continues to actively make connections and disruptions on the surface of each piece. What begins as playful becomes critical then playful again and on and on. This back and forth is what is important to the paintings’ ability to create multiple narratives—which pushes us to consider things far beyond Hayden’s work and their multiple narratives. Her playful interaction with these warm encounters have pushed ideas for me to embrace—and in this I hold her. Hayden plays with material, words, and images to give play agency. This agency is created through the playful activities happening in the work that negotiate time and space—complicating relationships through a kind of reimaging of history. In this way, playful associations create multiple modes of being epitomized by Hayden’s use of emojis, references to internet-culture, psychedelic backgrounds, violent yet rather campy video game stills, and Mickey Mouse.

Erin Hayden. “Let’s dance a little” 2018. 20” x 14”, mixed-media on digitally dyed fabric (installation view) UIS Visual Arts Gallery, University of Illinois Springfield. Courtesy of UIS Visual Art Gallery. Photo: Erin Hayden.

Erin Hayden. “I need some chocolate” (detail) UIS Visual Arts Gallery, University of Illinois Springfield. Courtesy of UIS Visual Art Gallery. Photo: Erin Hayden.

One of the sixteen small paintings that plays with me—holds me—the most is grounded by shiny reflections reminiscent of pennies in a wishing well, layered with these thick, orgasmic (for the painterly painter), awkward rectangles of material exploration which bar out Washington like stacks of gold or grids of currency, all finally subtitled with the words, “I HOPE IT RAINS” – maybe or maybe not a reference to the Louis Prima song, “Pennies from Heaven.” It is through these moments of play that associations are made which make it very difficult to focus on me without we—those and that which create the environment to be held.

Erin Hayden. “All wrapped up” 2018. 72”x44”, mixed-media on digitally dyed fabric (installation view) UIS Visual Arts Gallery, University of Illinois Springfield. Courtesy of UIS Visual Art Gallery. Photo: Erin Hayden.

The largest stretched painting in the room is what first confronts you as you enter the gallery, yet as you walk towards the center of the room to view the show in its entirety, the show title, functioning like bookends, is broken up between the two alcoves acting to hold us—the public situated in a public university in the capitol of the Land of Lincoln. The morning before I went to the opening of “Hold Me” I was reading the epilogue of Bonnie Honig’s Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair. In the epilogue Honig writes,

“An image presses itself on me as I write this; three; actually, three iconic images of Marian Anderson performing at the Lincoln Memorial. Looked at in sequence, they seem to represent the Arendt/Winnicott trajectory—from held to holding to action in concert—all in relation to a public thing. The object does not change in these images but Anderson’s relation to it, our relation to it, does.”³

Later that same day I walked into a gallery in a space that is one of many public things and found it impossible to stop myself from making connections between Hayden’s work and Honig’s Ardent/Winnicott trajectory. It seemed uncanny to me that the epilogue would reference an image of Lincoln again, holding. Honig recalls the story of Marian Anderson, a great African American vocalist, who in 1939 was denied access to Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and instead performed on Easter Sunday in front of the Lincoln Memorial where she opened with “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” singing ‘to thee we sing’ instead of the usual ‘of thee I sing.’⁴

Erin Hayden. 2018. “Hold Me” (Installation View) UIS Visual Arts Gallery, University of Illinois Springfield. Courtesy of UIS Visual Art Gallery. Photo: Erin Hayden.

The description of Anderson’s performance requires no flourishing of words to recognize its significance, yet paired with the images Honig describes it reminds us of just how important the agency of things can be to our collective recognition of places, spaces, time, and things—all part of an active trajectory. Hayden’s show title “Hold Me” requests the return of an embrace that has been extended towards the viewer as it is already actively holding us. Perhaps this connection between Hayden and Honig embraces our play with images and paint (where we are held), our various connections and interpretations lent to us by ambiguous moments in the work (where we are holding Hayden), and a hopeful reflection on a we (a democracy) collectively interacting with the space, with things, in action.