Photographs, Performance
Forced Happiness Piece

(excerpt from Every Day Counts: Reactions and Reflections on Linda Montano)

ART
For one week I photographed myself smiling every day.
I stood in the same place, held up a sheet of paper with the appropriate number, and took a photograph of myself.

LIFE
This was a difficult exercise to complete. I was feeling stress due to the workload of graduate school. Forcing yourself to smile when you don’t want to is a very difficult thing. I had to think of things that make me very happy, in order to create a smile that didn’t seem completely fake or contrived. Most of the time, I thought of Max.

In a way, this task was like yoga or meditating. It was methodical and required hardly any thought at all. It was a chance to change my mood through positive reinforcement, but most of the time it felt like a lie.

As a child I often felt forced to smile. I went through a school system that was strict, unimaginative and demeaning. I had very few friends I enjoyed spending time with, and I was happiest when watching movies, spending time with my family and making art. I was once at a birthday party, and someone was being mean to me. I snuck away from celebration outside, and went inside the house to the living room to cry. I just wanted to go home. One of the adults brought a group of children into the house with her, and pointed at me saying, “Look kids. If you laugh, the whole world laughs with you. But if you cry, you cry alone.”