PositiveColumbia JournalThese disparate musings are brought together by her question: \'Can art do anything, especially during periods of crisis?\' Laing has written through Brexit, the AIDS crisis, Trump’s election, Charlottesville and racist killings by the American police. Her questions remain deeply resonant today. In this surreal time, Laing offers questions that many creative people are asking themselves: What is the role of art and artists during a pandemic? What is the role of viewers and witnesses of art? ... The individual essays provide glimmers of life, suffering, pain, pleasure, and incredible willpower of past and present artists ... The collage is loosely bound into eight sections, but the links between artists, artistic phenomenon, technique, and cultural movement are tenuous. Laing’s curatorial drive takes readers into all corners of contemporary art and literature, but the larger questions about art and politics remain unanswered ... At times, the pieces feel scattered and without a cumulative arch towards addressing the question she sets out to answer ... Nonetheless, the breadth of Funny Weather isn’t without power. The extent of Laing’s curiosity and hunger for information is radical and exhilarating. The sheer volume and quantity of artists that are recorded and revered in Funny Weather creates its own version of hope—there are so many ways art can instill hope or collective anger or drive action in times of need ... With museums and galleries temporarily or permanently closed, Funny Weather offers a generous outlet for imagination and creativity. Even in a pre-pandemic world where one could go to the Whitney and look at a Pollock or walk through a Sarah Lucas exhibit, Laing provides windows into the personal lives of artists which add nuance and contextual meaning beyond museum labels and gallery blurbs.Laing is a knowledgeable and trustworthy tour guide in Funny Weather, introducing us to artists, artwork, and stories that we are then responsible for making meaning of in the context of our own lives.
Cathy Park Hong
RaveThe Columbia Journal... this is one of the things the book accomplishes: building a deep and immediate sense of connection, intimacy and awareness ... The essays are provocative, as they are vulnerable and tender. Hong draws on her experiences of being raised in Koreatown, Los Angeles, fraught family dynamics, friendship and art, in order to understand the Asian American psyche. In this quest, she urges her readers to consider how we imbue people with preconceived stereotypes and expectations related to race ... To this end, Hong provides new and necessary language for discussing the complexities of race ... The essay collection itself is anchored by Hong’s own versions of minor feelings. Her voice is confident, provocative, and relentless as she reflects on her own experiences. She resists traditional arcs of emotional overcoming or demise by peppering the book with episodes of self-doubt—a minor feeling she taps into often ... the emotional contradictions in this book are working at a deeper level, too ... This book gives language to those of us who never learned in college or media or life how to talk about this liminal racial space we inhabit, which is both purgatory and privilege ... [she] is a fierce and much-needed voice today.
