CONSTELLATIONS
ABOUT A WEEK BEFORE before COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, I was inspired to go down to Chinatown where the Lunar New Year was being celebrated. Fire crackers, streamers, and confetti were blowing up in celebration. A familiar intuitive inclination pushed me to take photographs of all the celebratory gunk strewn all over the street. I didn't know why. The images were like modern-day Pollock Drip Paintings. But, in the lines formed by the trash and fallen streamers, you could envision shapes, like the animals imagined by lines stretched between stars. I didn't see years of the Cat, Dog, or Rabbit, nor Capricorns, Leos or Taurus, but, rather, entirely new constellations. They seemed to suggest a whole new age, so I named each one with a new animal. It wasn't until months later, when the virus began spreading across the globe, that I realized how prescient my inclination was and how these images were —at least for me— signifiers for time that changed everything.
