“How Did That All Get Turned Upside Down?”

“The Upside Down Jesus and Politics of Survival,” Robert Colescott (1987)

I had planned on sharing my little journal entries recapping L.A. Art Week favorites, but since Friday’s battle of AI ethics in surveillance and war—followed by an attack on an Iranian girls’ school—I simply couldn’t.

Instead, I’m sharing just one piece from the Eileen Norton collection (on exhibition at Hauser & Wirth until August 16, 2026): a graphite and watercolor sketch with marginalia befitting the time, even four decades later. Penciled along the bottom frame: I was thinking about compassion, humility—so-called Christian values—how did that all get turned upside down?

“We Lived Happily During the War,” penned by Ilya Kaminsky, comes to mind again. It’s been lingering since I first came across the poem a few years ago:

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

 

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

 

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

 

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

 

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

 

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

 

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

 

lived happily during the war.

.   .   .

xx