Symin Adive (Bangladesh/US)

Bio

Symin (sigh-mean) Adive makes sad/fun art. She is a writer for The Onion as well as an Art Director/glorified Graphic Designer whose past clients have included The Empire State Building and Upright Citizens Brigade. Symin is brown, bi, and a third word that starts with “B.” The Bangladeshi artist resides in NYC and Norway. She has received grants from NYFA (City Artist Corps), Queens Council on the Arts and the Norwegian Parliament. Her work combines hurt and humor. It both overshares and sugarcoats. She uses her background in comedy and design to make the unpalatable palatable via multiple mediums (film, interactive, 2d, 3d). In her work, all the absurd and familiar ways in which we relate are of key importance especially if it’s hilariously sad and sadly, hilarious. Her recent projects focus on community (or lack thereof) and creating fun-ish, interactive and thought provoking make-shift “third places” antithetical to the clinical walls of the art gallery. Adive specializes in making playful environments for people to contemplate otherwise darker subject matter like CPTSD and lost childhoods.

Project

“Adult Fun (No, Not Like That).” Unfortunately, when the word “adult” is affixed in front of words like toy, games, fun, or play, it suddenly creates a connotation – sexual or sinister. Adult toys. Adult games. But surely that can’t be the only way for a grown person to experience happiness… Is a wholesome, uncomplicated joy only for the young? Symin is interested in exploring joy and humor. In personifying wholesome joy in adulthood. How did we go from wild unbridled unselfconscious joy of youth to muted reserves of adulthood? Is analyzing fun taking all the fun out of fun? Maybe, but if the fun’s already gone, maybe analyzing it can bring it back. It seems like as we grow up we live less in our bodies and more in our heads. This project explores how fun, wacky, zany, nonsensical, sober uninhibited child-like wholesome joy can be lost and how we can get it back in adulthood. The project will begin with a series of interviews. Of adults. Of kids. Kids will give instructions to adults – how to move, how to behave. Adults will act out what brought them joy way back when and what fun looks like to them now. Through workshops, adult toys (no, not like that) will be created from locally sourced materials. All the interactive elements and research will culminate in the creation of a game, of the school yard variety, that evokes Child-Like Fun…For Adults. And lastly, there will be a film to capture “Adult Fun (No, Not Like That).”

Who Gets To Have Fun?
By Symin Adive

Who gets to have fun?
How? Where? Why? When? With Whom?
For what length of time?
Who gets to rise above the doom? The gloom?

The lucky
The supported
The feared
The few

No, everybody, but for a minute or two
An hour at most
A day, A week
Surely you’ve heard, fun is not for the meek

Who gets to have fun?
The fat cats with jet packs and money to burn?
They seem too fixated on the next
To enjoy their turn after turn

Who gets to have fun?
The man with free live-in care
A wife, a mommy, a maid, a secretary
So he can play endlessly because the world deems it fair

Who gets to have fun?
The high, the horny, the drunk, the scrolling fools?
Who can’t sit with their thoughts
And need a crutch to unspool

Adults too self-conscious
Too filled with shame
Who forgot silliness
For their own adult game
What a privilege
To not value (wholesome, undocumented) fun
I find that I need it
lest I come undone

my wigs
my music
my craft
my twirls
A break from the masking,
the humdrum, the doldrum, the world unfurl

I think it’s funny
That you can be thrust into crippling horror
Then still be expected to function
To produce
To be of use
To be “normal”
To be “fun” for everyone
That’s asking a lot, is it not?

Does fun exist in factories?
In prisons? In bombed communities?
Do you play with the ashes?
Can you have fun while you seethe? While you rage? While you bleed?

If fun is not given
Then fun must be earned
Fun can be wiped out
Fun can be unlearned

But it can be done
The fun
And I wish you well
To all without time
Without support
Without a hope
In hell

How?
How else but through money, the making. the saving
Only in reach is fun for the taking

Where?
Far away from anything that could hurt you, hurt me
Safety is important in fun, that you will see

Why?
Because, ignore what they say, fun is a right.
But I am a leftist and I am too tired to fight

When?
In the nominal window, when you don’t have to worry about keeping yourself alive.
While you still have your body, your mind, a room of one’s own, and your friends in kind

With whom?
Including me,
people who can let go and let be

No permission needed, but I will grant it nonetheless
Have fun. Let other people have fun.
Look stupid.
Go wild.
Scream.
Rest.

For —
who gets to rest?