Portrait of a young alumna as a work in progress

Last weekend I saw NYC 1993:  Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, at the New Museum. The exhibition centered on the year 1993 and according to the exhibition notes “…is conceived as a time capsule, an experiment in collective memory that attempts to capture a specific moment at the intersection of art, pop culture, and politics.”

Going through the exhibition, the lapsed visual artist in me experienced relief that I could still distinguish a Cindy Sherman from a Nan Goldin. I was dismayed at the power Matthew Barney’s videos still have – at least with respect to creeping me out.  And I was pleased to be able to place the Paul McCarthy based on my only other encounter with it at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami when I was at Art Basel with my dad aka, the Art Dealer. 

Were it not for the exhibit’s focus on 1993, I might have worn it as lightly as I wear most exhibits these days – mildly engaged in the moment and easily distracted once I’m back out on the street and in search of a post-art viewing meal. 

But, there it was 1993 in bold faced wall text.

Not quite a Proustian cookie-induced memory rush, but close. 

In 1993, I graduated from 8th grade.  Big changes were afoot and like my favorite Saved by the Bell character, Jessie Spano, I was “so excited…and so scared.”  I was leaving the private school that I had known since kindergarten and the relative comfort of my social status.  I was bound for what at the time I dreaded was going to be a sub-par education and socially traumatic experience at the local high school.  I was wrong on both counts.  But that’s for another blog post.

In 8th grade, my classmates voted me the female in the class who would be “Most Likely to Succeed.”  This superlative might have activated my social caste standing insecurity were it not for the fact that I spent most of my lunch periods at the co-ed (read:  cool kids) table playing at the edges of a Heathers-like sadism that many adolescent girls play so well.  Underneath my fashionable (at the time) Gap pleated skirts, popped collared polo shirts, and Sam and Libby ballet flats, I was a nerd and more of a Winona Ryder-Veronica than any of the Heathers. 

Success in 1993 narrowly meant that I would be the one to get into Harvard.  We didn’t have the vocabulary for a definition that included much else.  We didn’t need to. Affluenza was a constant epidemic, against which we were not inoculated. We had everything else we could want, courtesy of our parents. 

In 1997, Harvard would take a back seat to a different Ivy League school, but one that still felt worthy of my classmates’ expectations. 

Here in 2013, a few blocks away from me, my fellow alumni are descending upon that Ivy League school in orange and black droves that would rival any cicada brood emergence for our annual reunions festivities.  I’m feeling peaceful this year in a way that I haven’t felt since my first reunions, when I was bursting with academic achievements, the promise of a future with Jamie, and a space waiting for me at a top law school that would surely cement the financial security that my parents had worried over when I had declared my visual arts major. 

To be fair, the last twelve years have been kinder to me than I would have ever thought to imagine when I was in 8th grade and wearing my “Most Likely to Succeed” superlative as well as a gangly teenager with braces and big red plastic glasses could. 

So why is this year different from other years?    

Am I finally the most successful version of myself?

Here in 2013, I’m not sure what I want that to mean.  Here in 2013, I’m not sure that’s the right question to ask.

Back in 1993, I was experiencing a moment when the intersections of my compartmentalized identity began to collide and coalesce.  I was not yet an Ivy-Leaguer, the other half of the best relationship of my life, or a recovering attorney. I was not yet comfortable with my scribbles being called art of the visual or creative writing sort. I was not yet out of braces. But I was on the verge of something.

Today, once again, I’m on the verge.       

It’s a freeing kind of verge. 1993 was a specific moment. 2013 is another moment and I’m excited.  And still a little bit scared.

But, I don’t have time to waste it on what if.  Time to go and experience what is.

-Ara Tucker, 2013