About a decade ago, Damien Davis was at a fundraising event when the director of a Brooklyn residency encouraged him to apply for a Van Lier studio fellowship. damiendavis went home, pulled together the application, and hit submit with the kind of optimism that sustains artists between yeses. The rejection landed quickly: he was ineligible because he was too old. Not by years or months, but literally seven days too old. That absurd moment revealed something larger. It wasn’t just a lost residency; it was a reminder of how time itself disciplines artists, deciding who counts as “emerging,” who gets resources, and who gets written out. “On paper, the program is designed to correct inequities by providing artists of color and other marginalized communities with early-career resources they’ve historically been denied,” Davis says. “In practice, it means that at the moment I recommitted to making art, I was already past my expiration date.” To read the full opinon by damiendavis, visit...