Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Date: June 1, 2022 - July 1, 2022

Gallery: Meta B. Brown + Rossi Galleries

Inspired by the legendary online ‘book’ of imaginary words by John Koenig (now available in book form), artists are invited to illustrate a word from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows or invent your own to translate into visual form. View the online archive of words here: https://archive.org/details/the-dictionary-of-obscure-sorrows Guest Judge. Cash Awards.

Weareoneism

When one awakens to seeing souls not people, the spiritual dimension of oneness teaches that if one suffers, all suffer.

Allsorrowsfull

When one’s inbox of painful learning experiences is full and cannot tolerate any more.

inspired by Klexos: the art of dwelling on the past. “A glancing wound from years go might still be bleeding under the surface, having hurt you in ways that affect your entire life.”

Altschmerz

Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.

Ambedo

A kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life, a mood whose only known cure is the vuvuzela.

Apolytus

The moment you realize you are changing as a person, finally outgrowing your old problems like a reptile shedding its skin, already able to twist back around and chuckle at this weirdly antiquated caricature of yourself that will soon come off completely.

Mahpiohanzia

The frustration of being unable to fly, unable to stretch out your arms and vault into the air, having finally shrugged off the burden of your own weight, which you’ve been carrying your entire life without a second thought.