Sofia Szamosi

Spit Wall

Sofia Szamosi

Spit Wall

Date

2019

Edition Size

30

Media

Hand-painting, Screenprint

Binding

Pamphlet

Format

Artist Book

Dimensions

10 × 8.25 in

Pages

26

Location

Brooklyn, NY

$ 225.00

10 in stock


When I was fifteen I had a spit wall. A spit wall is a wall in your bedroom where you spit. Spit Wall is a recreation of that bedroom in book form.

I built a spit moat in my bedroom that adults did not cross. Spit and paint alike splattered across all surfaces, which became an extended pallet for ongoing art projects and diary pages. Buoyed by the unshakable certitude of a righteous adolescent, I expressed myself in a way I never would again: with total disregard of the systems that dominate adult life, and a bold selfishness.

My spit wall was once a symbol of my isolation. It pushed others out, and represented feelings that were themselves isolating. But now it connects me. It is the viscous glue that fuses me to all other “troubled teens.” It is the DNA of my outrage.
It is wholly unacceptable to spit on walls. Especially on the walls of one’s own bedroom. That is surely “matter out of place,” as Mary Douglas described the taboo. It is intellectually, socially, and hygienically wrong. I spit on the walls to declare my personhood. I spit on the walls to individuate myself, a process that did not -does not- go smoothly.

How does a young person process a new adult world that is so structurally unfair? How does a girl become a woman in a world that so often funnels both into victimhood? How does a person sit with feelings that have been deemed inappropriate, unacceptable or unsafe?
There are many ways, I learned later on. But at fifteen, I just spit.
— Sofia Szamosi, artist.