luís manuel araújo
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selected projects
Dreams Made Flesh
8 May — 26 June 2021
Galeria Catinca Tăbăcaru, Bucharest
Catinca Malaimare, Xavier Robles de Medina, Zoe Williams, Bruno Zhu
curated by Luís Manuel Araújo
Queer feelings may embrace a sense of discomfort, a lack of ease with the available scripts for living and loving, along with an excitement in the face of an uncertainty of where the discomfort may take us.
— Sara Ahmed, in ‘The Cultural Politics of Emotion’ (2004)
Dreams Made Flesh presented works by four artists who explore, through a queer lens, how we relate to our objects of desire.
Queer desire often attaches itself to everyday objects deemed illegitimate by normative society because their uses disrupt the standardisation of sex, gender, and sexuality. Conceived in the belief that queerness can break the repetition of a scripted life, the exhibition proposes that new material cultures emerge when objects resist the pressures of normativity. In dialogue, the works draw out the potential of things we project ourselves onto, generate emotions through, take pleasure in, and adorn ourselves with.
Catinca Malaimare premiered Eight of Clubs |♧|, a film in which she manipulates a LED photography light composed of eight limbs joined by a circular core, a form that resembles both a spider and a withering flower. The work creates a sensuous experience, amplified by the sound of skin rubbing against plastic as the artist tests the limits of her anatomy, using the full reach of her body to grasp the object’s limbs. Intimacy between human and machine also appears in new prints where Malaimare poses with two Discoverer Space Helmet TVs from the 1980s — alternately confronting us with a challenging gaze or dismissing us by looking away. She also presented live performances that revealed how anthropomorphic technologies captivate the senses and stir emotions such as fear, desire, and love.
Xavier Robles de Medina has developed a collection of found images drawn from online platforms and printed matter. Through appropriation and erasure, these materials become part of his visual vocabulary, as he strips away colour and subtly alters their form and texture. For Dreams Made Flesh, Robles de Medina translated two composites of four photographs into paintings. One, a portrait of Shakira at the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show, merges multiple angles of the singer glaring at her audience; through repetition, the acrylic-on-wood painting absorbs the affect of its subject and turns its gaze back upon the viewer. The other, a composite of four interiors, depicts only furniture and drapery. In the absence of people, the domestic objects appear animated, engaged in their own exchange. While one painting performs human presence, the other stages a conversation among things freed from their users.
Sunday Fantasy (2019) by Zoe Williams is a film and installation inspired by a Roman perfume bottle the artist encountered in the British Museum. Its protagonist, Veronica Malaise, is played by four different actresses, each interpreting the character in her own way and using the ancient vial to conjure intimate fantasies. Drawings, ceramics, and glass replicas of the bottle — originally made as film props — extend the playful universe of Sunday Fantasy into the gallery. If social norms have scripted our relationships with objects in ways that reinforce binary gender roles, Williams invites us, through seduction, fetishism, and witchcraft, to reimagine desire outside such prescriptions.
Bruno Zhu‘s Joy (b. 2019) is a bar of soap resembling an egg on a feathery nest alongside cosmetic accessories kept in bespoke canvas pockets. Joy was born in 2019 in New York and is surrounded by beauty products. We project anthropomorphic behaviour onto this piece of soap because it is presented as a baby associated with gendered signifiers of a possible future: beauty blenders, cuticle cutters, tweezers, and makeup brushes. The assemblage humorously reflects the standardisation of social behaviour and exposes the assumption that our bodies are naturally oriented toward certain objects from birth. Our interactions with things can be seen as programs of action that structure social reality — some performed by humans, others entrusted to non-humans.
The four artists have contributed to a booklet published on the occasion of ‘Dreams Made Flesh’. Inspired by the Romanian tradition tăierea moțului, the publication shows a selection of objects on a silver tray, each embodying a secret desire by one of the artists.
click here to read and download the digital version of the booklet
press
Zile si nopti interview with Catinca Malaimare by Ioan Big
Zile si nopti interview with Xavier Robles de Medina by Ioan Big
arte vezi chronicle by Elena Ghițoiu
links
catincatabacaru.com/exhibitions/dreams-made-flesh
photos by Catalin Georgescu
exhibition images courtesy of Galeria Catinca Tăbăcaru, Bucharest
images of Zoe Williams works courtesy of Ciaccia Levi, Paris
luís manuel araújo 