Take a Deep Breath

The spongy mask supersized (45" x 50") style helps me as a viewer to breathe easier for a gallery moment, especially while still actually wearing a mask myself. It’s a scenario similar to the adage of a tattoo on a tattoo. It almost becomes a happy fixture from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in this enlarged scale. Artist Noé Piña nailed it with his whacky sculpture “Take a Deep Breath” that is made of foam, heat bond fabric, spray adhesive, and nylon rope. He transformed the very serious subject matter of human health into a playful way to cope when ways to cope are needed as much now as ever. The entire exhibition of “Hindsight 2020” I find to be therapeutic in allowing a way for artists to voice their experience with the pandemic over the course of 2020 on into the present.

–Jason Miller, Museum Media Specialist