The Weight
A Small Book with 167 Drawings of People Waiting, Waiting in a line...waiting on the phone...waiting patiently...working at home. 167 wonderfully expressive symbols of Fikaris's Everyone. The figure stands alone with a phone or shopping bags or arms folded, helpless or eager or inquiring; sits, reading documents held at arm's length, or on an unseen chair in a waiting room; stands in a group, individuality increased by the presence of others.
Everywhere the background is blank, subtly encouraging or threatening. The figure always wears a hazmat suit, faceplate serving for a face, air filter serving for a nose.
All these figures are stark and vulnerable, minutely observed and drawn with affection. They are us - they know as much or as little as we do, are as much as the mercy of their bags and baggage, or as hopeful, as we are. They're a silent army of our habits and ways, archetypal as Tarot cards.
The figures on the covers sit on visible chairs, the only figures in the collection with an explicit context. They drip oil they don't seem to see. As if footnoting the epigraph, those two images seem to suggest that communal meaning doesn't only consist of being among other people, but also of being in a physical world, among geological weights and consequences.
"Individuality, the essence of our current cities and communal rites/capitalist meaning, is only possible when we see the bigger 'we'." - Terre Theimlitz
Published by Reprobate Books, 2022
20 copies available here.