AN UNSINKABLE ART-MAKER TRANSFORMS TRAUMA AND HARDSHIP INTO EXPRESSIONS OF HUMANITY AND SELF-AWARENESS

by Edward M. Gómez, in dialogue with the artist Linda Sibio

The broad corpus of Linda Sibio’s creations and teaching may be regarded either as one big, multifaceted, very personal form of conceptual art, or as a myriad of individual art projects, each of which has been prompted by some kind of big idea of its own.

It’s fair to say that the genesis of all of this seemingly unsinkable art-maker’s activity lies deep in a reservoir of pain, fear, darkness, and hardship, all of which, miraculously, she has managed to transform into expressions of humanity and self-awareness.

In the best senses of the word, Sibio is a survivor, someone who has had to pick herself up, pull up her socks, and keep putting one foot in front of the other with concentration and resolve more times than most people would be able to count. Her motto very well could be that definitive existentialist bon mot from the end of the modern Irish writer Samuel Beckett’s novel, The Unnamable (1953): “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

Recently, Linda shared with brutjournal a summary of her life and art-making career, out of which we sought to tease those strains of thinking, observation, and experience that have formed the basic concepts that have shaped her art.