ARE YOU OK?
Whatever it is, we cannot accept, It is, what it is.
Nearly a year ago, I made my first short video of Linda Mussmann entitled Theater of Words. In January, 2026, I returned for a conversation with Linda about her recent exhibition, SHEBANG!, spanning the first year of the Trump presidency. The year of 2025 will go down in history as a barrage of assaults on our democracy and on reason and decency. Those of us who are not part of the current administration and cannot fathom entirely his motivations are left in a quandary about what will become of our democracy. While Linda remains steadfast in her beliefs about economic, social and political justice (a trademark of Time and Space Limited), she expresses uncertainty about our future. (The killing of a white woman by ICE the night before in Minneapolis adds to this uncertainty to this moment.)
With uncertainty seasoned with questioning, Linda touches the exposed nerve endings of our times. Each painting with text conveys her inner dialogue and asks us to go beyond accepting what is. Her paintings are raw. She uses words to doubt the world we think we know. She assembles viewers to reach a conclusion that knowing is more nuanced than we might imagine. In the gallery, I sense the paradox of language; it has the power to describe and express and yet it cannot explain all. In this confoundment, I arrive at a place of knowing that is akin to being aware.
Like me, the camera started her out on a journey to think about life. Early in her career, through the lens of the camera, she came to see the world in reflection. In the era in which she grew up (second half of the 20th century), she became enmeshed in the theater with a strong leaning toward social and political resistance. Linda came from rural Indiana and her partner, Claudia, from rural Georgia. She arrived in NYC in 1969 at the same time as landing a man on the moon. In the 1970s, she preferred living in a city besieged by poverty than on the desolate lunar landscape. With Claudia, the two of them forged a career in the theater and the visual arts.
Each painting in the room hangs on the wall like a kind of proscenium on which a voice of questioning and rage calls out. If you pay attention to the work carefully, you cannot help but hear the dissonant warnings of a happening or impending disaster. The title of the exhibition, SHEBANG!, cries out to all of us humans. “Do you see what’s happening? Do you know what’s happening? Was it OK? What are we supposed to do? What do we have to say?” It’s not the whole SHEBANG! Yet it has a lot to say. I look. I listen. I hear. And I encourage you to do the same.