Berkshire Artist Spotlight: Nina Pelaez, “TENDER: A TRIVIAL PURSUIT”
With the support of Assets for Artists, CARE SYLLABUS put out a call in the Fall of 2021 for local artists to share work exploring the different meanings of care in their lives. Our third submission in this series is an excerpt of a work by artist, art historian and educator Nina Pelaez. The following text and recording from “TENDER: A TRIVIAL PURSUIT,” are both parts of a participatory performance/reading/workshop that explores practices of exchange, vulnerability, sensitivity, and care. Please listen and/or read below.
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In 1993, the artist Jenny Holzer emblazoned the marquee of the now-gone Selwyn Theatre in New York City with the phrase:
IT IS IN YOUR SELF INTEREST
TO FIND A WAY
TO BE VERY TENDER
The marquee sat between a clothing store on one side and a porn theatre on the other. I imagine the sign, for those who noted it, was at once beautiful and disarming. Perhaps because this aphorism pushes us to wonder what tenderness might have to do with self-interest at all. How ever might we find a way to be very tender, as if tenderness were a state of being we might extend ourselves towards— like a heliotrope turning to the sun? For tonight’s game, I would like to consider the nature of tenderness: what does it mean to be tender? Why is it in our self-interest to consider tenderness at all?
ROUND ONE: ON THE TENDERNESS OF BODIES
There is no consensus on what the most tender bone in our human bodies is. Some say it is the spine, the bones of the hand, or the six bones of the inner ear. Others say it is the lacrimal bones— their shape and size that of a small fingernail pressed into the inner socket of each eye. It is, in all its poetry, one of the bones that allows us to cry: the minuscule hollow in its surface, called a fossa, latin for “ditch,” protects the small sac that holds our tears.
These bones look as if they were formed by accident, like small shards of shattered pottery, with ridges and crests that fit perfectly into the puzzle of our skull. The lacrimal bones’ tenderness is not judged, however, from their utility, but from their size and constitution. Indeed, the jury is out on how we judge tenderness, as tenderness has so many meanings: is it the smallness of a thing? Its proclivity to break? The pliability of its form? And yet, we might think of crying as an expression of tenderness too: tenderness as defined, among many other meanings, as “showing care” or as the description of one who is “highly susceptible to emotions.”
For this first round, please answer the following:
How do you measure your tenderness?
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
For instance, you might say I measure my tenderness in tears of joy, or I measure my tenderness in the slow pulse of my wrist.
More than one answer will be accepted. We will take a moment.
ROUND TWO: ON THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF TENDER
It feels important to clarify that tenderness is a capacious adjective: a descriptor of things delicate, soft, feeble, caring, painful, young. The word dates back to the 13th century, where it described things of delicate constitution such as freshly baked bread, porcelain, limestone and also, meat. In the 14th century, its meaning extended to include descriptions of youth or immaturity, and by the 15th century it came to describe feelings of love or pain, or both. It wasn’t until the 17th century that the term came to describe touchy or delicate topics. It is also at this same time that farmers began using tender to describe animals or plants in need of particular protection, especially from frost: take the cherry tree, azalea, rhododendron, dahlia, caladium, cyclamen, impatiens, geraniums, begonias. Also, turkeys.
For this round, I would like for us to try to exhaust tenderness.
List three things you would describe as tender:
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
For instance, you might say: kittens, balloons, my lover’s chest or, perhaps exoskeletons, secrets, the soles of my feet.
All answers will be accepted. We will take a moment.
ROUND THREE: ON TENDING
Tender is also a noun— tender not only as softness, but also, as one who tends. When I think of this definition, I think of my mother who tends for my grandmother, whose bones are so tender she can no longer walk on her own. My mother also tended for my grandmother’s sister, whose bones were strong up until the very end but whose mind was not. It goes without question: to tend for another, to be a tender, requires incredible strength in the face of pain and loss and grief.
But strength comes in all forms. A ship’s tender, for instance, is often smaller than that it tends, ushering mail, or men, or fuel. But in the case of my mother, I wonder who tends to her, as even the smallest crafts have boats who support them: see for instance the dinghy or the jolly boat, the pinnace, or the gig. Sometimes when tending to others, one forgets to tend for themselves. To return to Jenny Holzer’s work, I find myself questioning if tenderness is indeed always in our self-interest. I suppose it is not, and of course that seems obvious, and also is what makes that phrase at once so piercing and so generous.
For this round, answer the following:
Who or what do you tend?___________________________________
(And you might say:
I tend to my children when they are sick
or
I tend to the goldfinches who visit the yard to eat thistle in the dead of winter.)
2. Who or what tends to you?__________________________________
(And here you might say: my mother,
or perhaps instead, I am at a loss)
We will take a few moments.
ROUND IV: ON THE TENDERNESS OF THINGS
One evening, my mother, who tends for her mother and her mother’s sister, and also has chosen to tend for me for nearly all my life, gave me a 3 x 5 inch piece of paper with the inscription, “Lyndi April-1989” on it, written out in faded ink. On the other side was a photograph of my birth mother, whose name, I came to know then, was Lyndi. I have held on to this small unremarkable white piece of paper, created from a great massive living tree, whose origins would be, I expect, impossible to trace. I am amazed by how this thing, in all its meaninglessness, has come to be so meaningful for me. A single tree in a single forest is cut up and turned into a ream of paper, from which this single piece comes. This single piece, made sensitive by photo chemicals by the Eastman Kodak photography company, is used to develop a single negative—light cutting into the body of the paper, creating microscopic crystals that make this picture— snapped from a single camera somewhere near Las Vegas, Nevada in April of 1989. That small scrap of paper is then given to my mother who gives it to me.
It is, by all accounts, an unremarkable photograph. In the picture, a very young woman stands in a white room, before a small arched interior window that holds a hanging pot of flowering cyclamen and a terracotta vase. She is wearing a white blouse that in some areas, fades into the overexposed wall, and in her arms, she clutches a grey and white cat, showing off its soft white belly. If I look at this picture like an art historian, I might note the way the posture of the cat makes us think of Lyndi’s belly, hidden underneath her high waisted Levi's, hiding me. Sometimes I try and think of what I might say to Lyndi, try to find words that feel tender. I get stuck on the superficial— her jeans, her teased blonde hair, or her smile which is like my smile. Sometimes I don’t look at the picture for months, or even years, as if the thing were more than a thing.
Sometimes I remember that she is half my age in this picture and I suddenly feel an overwhelming tenderness, as if I'd like to protect her or tell her everything will be alright, although I know it won’t. Sometimes I have the desire to reach out and hold her, as if a thing could be tender like a body.
For this round:.
List some things towards which you feel tender:
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
(You might say, for instance: the pale green sea glass
I collected that cloudy April day, the tattered shirt my father loved,
my great-aunt’s watch, the last letter she wrote me,
the hostas we dug from the yard of your childhood home....)
We will accept as many answers as you have. We will take several moments.
FINAL ROUND: ON EXTENDING
The root of the word tender is the proto-Indo-European root ten- which means something thin or stretched. This root forms the Latin verb tendere, which means “to extend.” Extending takes on two meanings—to stretch out, as in to pull apart, but also to outstretch as in a hand reached out in offering or exchange, as in the transfer of goods.
But how else do we extend? Lifting to the inner corner of your eye to wipe away a tear?
Skimming your fingers across the tender white belly of the cat?
For this final round, I ask you to extend yourselves towards tenderness:
Look around you, look inside you.
Notice someone who you think could use your tenderness.
Notice someone who is particularly tender towards you.
Offer them your tenderness.
Receive their tenderness.
Do both at once.
Remember now, this is a game no one can win.
Remember that we are all tender.
We will accept all gestures. We will do this for as long as is necessary.