2023 Before Exile Series

I have relocated many times for a number of reasons, including education and employment. Nearly every place I have left I did so on my own terms with one exception: San Francisco. I lived in San Francisco from August 2015 to April 2020. I had hoped to thrive in San Francisco, but I did not. It was a struggle. I learned a lot living there, but I learned those lessons the hard way. I technically accomplished what I set out to do in moving to San Francisco: I received my MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2017. I worked quite hard cobbling together a career in the arts after graduating. Despite my best efforts, I made no friends. The harder I tried, the more despised I felt. With my multiple part-time jobs, I was barely able to afford my rent. From December 2019 to April 2020, I lost every single part-time job I had, only partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was forced to leave as I couldn't pay rent without a paycheck. I felt robbed of the opportunity to leave San Francisco on my own terms. So, for the first couple years, I felt incapable of coming to terms with what felt like defeat, a kind of exile. In 2023 I found a box of black and white film photography test prints that were used in a trial and error way to arrive at what would become a final print while I was a student. Of no value as themselves, I asked myself why I had kept them. I didn't have an answer and I still don't, but as I drew on them, I reflected on my experiences living in San Francisco and the circumstances that forced me to leave. Before Exile is a series of 40 mixed media drawings on photographic test prints. While I've numbered them to be sequential, they don't necessarily tell a cohesive, linear story. Instead, I see each drawing as an access portal to memories and abstractly experienced feelings I cannot articulate. For me, this was an exercise in attempting to mourn the death of my hopeful expectations about moving to San Francisco in 2015 as well as the death of the plethora of negative experiences I had there.
© 2024 Aaron Wilder. All rights reserved.