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My House, an Art Museum

Artwork by Gidi Gilam via AXS Art

Imagine a gigantic hole in your house.

You’ll try to think of different ways to fill that hole, cheaper ways, anything that would prevent the entire building from turning into rubble. It doesn’t matter even if you sleep facing the other side of the wall with a gigantic hole, because cold wind gushes inside and sinks like vampire’s teeth into your skin.

Is there someone watching me through that hole?

You wonder because you feel vulnerable and exposed. Do you know what a mason is? Perhaps not, because you bring home a sculptor instead to fill that gigantic hole in the wall. The sculptor makes a statue tall enough to fit inside the hole, but not wide enough to take the shape of the gigantic hole.

You feel less exposed, but the cold still lingers in your house.

So you bring home an artist. who fills the remaining spaces with shards of tinted glass, and the sight is something to behold. The artist and the sculptor unite and are inspired by the idea of filling gigantic holes with their creativity. Together, they drill holes in your house and fill them with every possible form of art, and you let them turn your house into an art museum.

Their zest is infectious and surrounds you with beauty in all forms.

But soon it gets crowded when people pour in from every nook and corner of the world to see your house. Your house echoes with so many voices and none of them belong to you, slowly erasing traces of your existence and making you feel invisible and exposed at the same time.

‘How long can I swim in the ocean, how long until I drown?’

Who knew that even a hole could weigh so heavy? Who knew that that weight could disappear the moment you walk straight through it, to realize that it was just an imaginary, gigantic hole.

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#readersubmission by Saman Fatima Khan

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