Frontline Nurse Nahw Yg’s Cathartic Photographs In The Time Of The Covid Pandemic.

As a curator I invest significant time to discovering new talent, scouring social media, looking for something that “has it”. I’m honestly lucky if I find something once a year or two that’s I think will be able to bear the onslaught of criticism while there are millions of artists out there competing for attention and adoration and acclaim.

It used to be, when my focus was sharper, I knew to the minute where we were. Since self quarantine and lockdown, it’s all blurred together now, the hours, the days, the weeks even. Something of my edge is gone, I hope I get it back, I’m trying.. Some days, I’l put on my warrior paint and costume, just to give myself a harder push to open my third eye and off i go hunting, hunting for power, hunting for something that will bring awareness and enlightenment, something that will inspire awe in this fucking endlessly bewildering time.

i can’t even remember which one I discovered the photographs of Nahw Yg, on instagram or facebook, social media, like the days themselves have all blurred into one. I do recall something deep within me being struck as I stopped in my tracks. This work just felt like a perfect fit inside my head, this was wiiiiiiiiitchcraft.

The brain is hot wired to recognize authenticity in art, be it in music, theater or cinema, literature, and the visual arts are by no means any exception. It speaks to our own ordeal, our trauma, manifests our our subjective experience in a way that affirms to us that being on the left-hand path, the one where we question the hegemony and seeks an ineffable affirmation of a higher order.

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”

― Mark Twain (in question, but i got this from Goodreads, usually a credible source).

I had to know the woman behind these photographs, I was infatuation at first sight already, and I wanted to get inside her world. Whatever was the source she was drawing from, i wanted some of that clean plasma. THIS is the connection we can have and strive for with art, whether it’s looking at something made by a hot little witch like Nahw Yg, or a Rembrandt at the MET or a Bosch at the Prada.

I reached out, no reply, I was spurned. The more the object of affection resists, the more powerful her allure is.. Off we go now.

“Thank you for your comment, but I’m not a real professional artist” she eventually replied, maybe even month later, I lost track of it but never forgot it. I actually mourned that she didn’t reply, I thought it was meant to be, a perfect fit of lock and key, was already fantasizing of reaping her admiration by making her famous.. But what was this? “..I’m not a real professional artist”?

Feeling emasculated, i just thought to myself “ah, fuck it, move on, there’s no hope, she’s too powerful and sees right through me”. In truth, I really didn’t have much of anything to offer her other than praise and admiration anyhow.. I had closed my Brooklyn gallery permanently in 2016, and was only doing the odd art fair, like the William Mortensen “WITCHES” exhibition i had mounted for SCOPE art show in march 2020 just before everything went to hell in New York and everywhere else on the planet.. I was doing a couple of pop up shows a year, the last one I did was a Twin Peaks tribute show that Rebekah Del Rio sang at the opening.. As great as these were as undertakings, I couldn’t see initiating anything that in this time until we had some kind of recovery back to normalcy. At first, back in march, that might have seemed like it was a months or so away.. then as time began to slow down and drag and schools and those non-essential business had to close, the severity of the situation began to sink in.. or so i thought. now six or seven months into it, and waaaaaaay behind the eight ball, I’m terrified. I dont see a way out of this for a year or more, or IF EVER. (According to Governor Cuomo today is looking like it will be a year, a year and half away.. wtf?)

Meanwhile, to perpetuate some attention and momentum instead of doing pop up shows, I had found what i thought was a cool alternative, 3D Virtual exhibitions with Kunstmatrix in Berlin. I remounted the Twin Peaks show, I also remounted a show I did in 2016 right after Bowie died “Saint – Bowie”. These got respectable attention. Cool. And my own creative urges were being fed. So I got this idea to do a virtual show about some of the creepier facets of my own personal art collection, and call it “APPARITIONS”. I circled back on Nahw Yg , and sank my teeth in by inviting her to participate..

Nahw Yg is an Autodidact. (An autodidact ( ancient Greek αὐτός autos ‘self’ and διδάσκειν didaskein ‘teach’) is a person who independently acquires knowledge or skills or has acquired them through observation, experiments, practice or reading. A directed autodidactic learning process is also referred to as self-study , in contrast to formalized study at a university*). She didn’t go to any art school or apprentice with a professional. Instead, she attended medical school at 17 years old, and began to work in the field at 19. According to her, she “did many stages in psychiatry and disabled people, my “specialty” .. she developed a private practice as a Craniosacral therapy**. She says “I have been working in hospital for 10 years and then quit it to explore other sides of caring. Recently i came to hospital as volunteer during the Covid phase..”

Nahw Yg says she began photography 8 years ago.. When asked about what inspired her to pick up a camera her reply is about as beautiful and sublime as her photographs themselves.. “Inner Emotions and feelings led me to begin photography. It was almost metaphysical, to express through the body the hardly expressible, the intangible / invisible. I create like i smile or cry, an impulse’.

I must have done something earth shatteringly magnificent towards humanity, most likely in one of my past lives, because I can’t think of anything in this one, because in spite of my utter unworthiness, she accepted my invitation. ( https://tinyurl.com/y256vtta ) . I decided to go full out and give her a whole wall, and astonishingly but not surprisingly her works held up toe to toe alongside the likes of gargantuans of the esoteric such as William Mortensen, William Hope, Jack Edwards, The Falconeer Brothers, John Myers, Robert Boursnell..

Her gratitude was remarkable.. Something in the art world that’s rare and to be treasured. Usually artists just push and push to get more marbles in their corner. Can’t blame them really, in general their opportunities are hard won, labored over and every last drop of equity possible needs to be drawn out of them. But too often, in my experience anyhow, not even that thankful wave you give to another driver who lets you cut in traffic is given on the way out the door and onto the next. So when someone expresses deep genuine gratitude for something you KNOW was largely for your own benefit and release of pent up desires, mostly sapiosexual, you’ve just liked them a lot more, and a connection is made with that artist, and want to do more for them, much more.

An opportunity came up to curate a real life version of the “Apparitions” exhibition for the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland and this was going to be an opportunity for us to perpetuate our dialogue, become familiars, and for me to test her art with audiences some more. I included two works, and set her up alongside other more well known contemporary artists such as Josh Stebbins, Alexis Karl, Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos, Kim Bo Yung, Inge Vandormael, Nicholas Syracuse, Dolorosa De La Cruz, Daniel Gonçalves, and two of the giants in the field of esoterica and occult art Barry William Hale and Shannon Taggart. I also began posting her work on my social media accounts and again astonishingly but not surprisingly her works got a very enthusiastic reception, including by other artists and collectors, major rock stars and major photography curators, people loved it. I knew I had something this was all an affirmation, although I didn’t need it, i wanted for her to have.

I asked her how she felt about this newfound admiration, she replies.. “It’s ok for me, i take all this like a gift and honor.”

Thanks to you Nahw Yg, you made me feel not so old and worn down in this fucked up upside down inside out backwards reality of truth are lies and lies are truth and what the fuck are we going to find out happened today American Nightmare reality show. In your art is a scintillation of hope, if albeit a tiny spark on the horizon, to have found something to look forward to, that there is power in the world, and like water, it seeks out it’s own source to come out into the light and reignite in us, a sense of awe.

See more of Nahw Yg’s art here ➔. https://spark.adobe.com/page/AGJuLCURAngOD/

*= https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidakt

**= https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17677-craniosacral-therapy