With the unfiltered directness of a child, Karen Finley has painted a delicate watercolor mural on a wall in Papaya World at 42nd and Seventh. The images form a sweet fairy-like family, decorated with (not scarred by) the lesions of Karposi's Sarcoma, a skin cancer rare before the advents of AIDS. In Finley's conception, the essence of love is acceptance. Viewing sores as things of beauty is a simple matter of perception. Called "Positive Attitude," Finley's handwritten poetry surrounds the smiling figures-thought, feeling and action inextricably linked.
"I initially abhorred Finley's installation, which transforms the former Papara World with a passion-purple paint job and a mural of inept drawing and poems reeking of treacly adolescent sentimentality. [But] Finley's has come to haunt me as I grasp its wavelength not with my sensibility but with the actual living and dying street.
"I ran way from her Papaya World piece, but it has caught up with me.
"The clumsy, flowery figures in Finley's mural are idealized, God touched nudes of a man, a woman and a child. They are accompanied by manic prose poetry of self-infatuation.
"'I am a polka dotted pony. Lollipops of cherry and grape adorn me...I am a bouquet for all mankind.'
"The intensity of the tone goes beyond typical teenage gush. It seems quite mad.Finley's installation is a sheer phenomenon, really happening in a real place habituated by real terrifyingly injured young people who she reaches toward with a certain presumption, but no condescension. A viewer is knocked sideways out of critical detachment into awareness of common humanity in need of uncommon, indeed practically incomprehensible compassion." ("All You Need," Peter Schjeldahl, The Voice: August 3, 1993)
Artists' Biography
Karen Finley has received numerous grants including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters Inc., and most recently, a Guggenheim Fellowship. Although best known for her performances, Finley also writes, acts, paints and makes environmental sculpture.
History of the Site
