Every time I come to New York I cry. I don’t cry a little, I cry a lot. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, who I’m with, if it’s hot or if it’s cold, thick snow or boiling humid, damp heat, I’m still going to cry.
I made a drawing once called “Sad shower in New York”. It was a drawing of me hunched under a shower head, my body looking sad. The spray from the shower even looks sad, I’m crying. I made that drawing back in the Nineties.
My life has changed radically since then. It’s almost unrecognisable, apart from the tears.
Every fucking time I come here, I cry. This time I’m crying because my heart’s breaking.
Broken, failing, dying.
It really hurts, it stops me from breathing and thinking, my face is almost dead. My smile moves like a painful crack across my face, it hurts. Everything hurts. I don’t want to be sad.
I need to be celebrating one of the greatest moments of my life but instead I’m holding on to a wounded heart. People keep asking me how I am and I say, apart from my health and my love life, everything is pretty brilliant.
It’s funny, the two most important things and I don’t have them. The fear always hits in when I have a searing sense of explosive happiness, it’s like I’m not allowed to be happy.
The day before I found out I had cancer, I was standing on my roof naked with a glass of champagne in my hand, toasting the sky to my happiness.
Today is one of the most important days of my life.
This evening my show opens at White Cube New York. It’s my first show here in nearly eight years and White Cube’s first solo show in the brand-new gallery. Never has a show meant so much to me. Since my illness many things have been a struggle. I hate moaning, but it’s a fact living without a major organ in your body is really tough. I’m so scared of letting people down, I’m scared of being tired, scared of being in pain, scared of the hot salty tears that keep burning my face. Scared that the sadness will show through. But right now I make myself a pledge. I will fight with all my heart and soul to make it a good day for me to remember.
I will not be hurt and bruised, instead I will let myself be carried by the love of my friends, I will rise up out of my darkness and like a spark I will light up my room, my world that I love and cherish.
Art has never let me down, art has always loved me. Today my art will carry me through to the next chapter of my life. It will protect me and cherish me. It will swaddle and hold me and tell me I am all things I should be.
Sometimes love must come from another world a different realm.
I can wait.
My exhibition LOVERS GRAVE
opens tonight at:
White Cube
1002 Madison Avenue
New York
+1 (212) 750-4232
