EmotionalPomegranatism

The Art of hiding one's true feelings by throwing a pomegranate at them.

Painting of a burst pomegranate, seeds spilling out over a blue ground.

After many years in ordinary conditions, a pomegranate dropped on my head. The world exploded. Everything somber was covered in juice.

A new movement was born.

  1. The pomegranate is the only fruit that has given its name to a weapon. We proceed from this.
  2. Feeling is chambered. Any work presenting an emotion as one undivided mass is a lie and will be named as such.
  3. The membrane is the subject. The seed is merely the reward.
  4. Effort is not a barrier to beauty. Effort is the price of admission, and the price is nonnegotiable.
  5. We reject the seedless: the grape, the watermelon, the entire twenty first century.
  6. We embrace The Slop. AI is admitted but denied authorship.
  7. The banana is forbidden. Not for what was done to it, but for how easily it allowed it.
  8. Persephone ate six seeds and was bound for six months. This is the only contract in art we recognize. You are liable for exactly what you swallowed.
  9. The wooden spoon is banned. So is the plastic deseeder, the bowl of water, and every other method by which the difficulty has been engineered out.
  10. Ancient Traditions hold that the pomegranate has 613 seeds. It does not. We hold the number anyway. A count that is wrong but exact outranks a count that is right but approximate.
  11. The word juicy is expelled from criticism. So are vibrant, evocative, and passionate.
  12. Sincerity is not the opposite of irony. Sincerity is the opposite of blueberries.
  13. An artist statement written in the third person is a confession, and will be read aloud at the opening. Judgement will follow.
  14. We do not devour the colonizer. We devour whatever is currently hanging. We digest it all. We do not spit out the skull.
  15. No Pomegranatist shall exhibit in any space that fears a stain.
  16. Vanitas is vanity. The Dutch knew.
  17. Pith is content.
  18. It stains. So does everything else. Wear the apron or do not.
  19. The work is never finished. New stains appear.
  20. Anything eaten without effort is not art.
  21. Emotional Pomegranatism means nothing. This is the single point on which we will accept no disagreement.
  22. Nobody knows who we really are. This includes us.
  23. There will be no second manifesto. A movement that revises itself has already ended.

HEX

  • the smoothie
  • the seedless grape
  • the mango for its ease
  • the word practice
  • the phrase in conversation with
  • the scaffolding
  • the selfing

BLESS

  • the seeds
  • the stains
  • the paring dagger
  • the crooked
  • the cracks
  • the leaks
  • anyone who has ruined a shirt