Afterlife | Estefanía B Flores, Jordan/Martin Hell, Anjuli Rathod
1 - 30 September 2023
The works in Afterlife, investigate the transformative and transgressive potential of grief, loss and remembrance.
Charged with yearning, tenderness, and at times, agony, several works explore the loss of self-identity and the struggle to regain coherent selfhood. Through narrative, storytelling and imagination, these ideas are interwoven with themes of mortality (our own and others), interconnectedness (or lack thereof), self-legibility and renewal. The giving and receiving of these accounts, opens up an archive of desire and meaning. For Jordan/Martin Hell, the process of sharing is akin to ‘digging death’s uncanny perversities as though divulging them around a camp fire upon earnest ears in the dead of night.’
Other works explore hallucinogenic, surreal states that are dislocating and catapult one into an alternate reality that differs markedly from the world we usually occupy. Love and loss are explored via temporality and tonality. There are ephemeral, serene images, filled with light and fluidity, that are only very tenuously connected to the real world and aim for a working-through of mourning for overcoming loss and restoration. They explore an imagined afterlife, with fantastical imageries of ghosts, communion with spirits, parallel worlds and dream worlds. In some works, otherworldly forms and colours are melded with influences from animation, which, says Estefanía B Flores, aim to create ‘superficial worlds conveying an absurdist, surrealist quality.’
Many works have a visceral nature, focusing on bodily metamorphosis and the corporeal. The processing of emotions is compared to the biological processes of digestion: slow, fundamental, and winding though the digestive organs. The body is spliced open to express the tensions between interiority and exteriority. Anjuli Rathod says that the digestive tract in particular has fascinated her - ‘the slow, ugly process of transformation, the cyclical processing of material serves as a metaphor for grief.’ Some of the works and writing in the show, also explore the death instinct through ideas around sex, pleasure and deviant behaviour. In other sculptures, there is an exploration of the not-yet-healed moment that signifies profound change, examined via the transgressive potential of ideas related to the fembot or gynoid - a technological extension or re-embodiment of selfhood and desire. In the book ‘In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives’ Jack Halberstam writes that instead of indicating naturalness, the exaggerated femininity and sexuality of the gynoids, in fact parodies stereotypes. The world thus created is from an escapist fantasy that allows momentary reprieve from reality and has subversive potential.
Through a deconstruction of threshold moments between past and future, the works in the show explore the transgressive potentials of grief, desire, tenderness, friendship and bliss to open up pathways to radical transformation and resilience.
Estefanía B Flores and Anjuli Rathod interviewed by Jordan/Martin Hell. Read full interviews here
Anjuli Rathod is a painter who lives and works in New York. She earned her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Rathod has participated in residencies at The Millay Colony of the Arts, the Studios at MASS MoCA, and Shandaken Projects. Solo exhibitions include Harkawik, New York, Y2K Group, New York and Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, two-person exhibitions at Projet Pangeé, QC and Safe Gallery, NY. Recent group exhibitions include Jeffrey Deitch, New York and Los Angeles; Deli Gallery, New York; Selenas Mountain, Queens; Harkawik, New York; Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia; Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York; Kristen Lorello Gallery, New York; Rubber Factory, New York; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, and Knockdown Center, Queens.
Jordan/Martin Hell is a black trans (2s) interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, & scholar living in London. He attended Städelschule (DE), Cooper Union School of Art (NYC), & is a PhD candidate in English & Drama at Queen Mary University of London. Being that writing & curating publications is a large part of his practice, he's written extensively both critically & interdisciplinarily across art & culture in many hybrid forms. His books include CONSTANT VIOLINS (Arcadia Missa), LIMERENCE CLICKBAIT XXX (Soft Opening), & others. He's shown work, co-curated projects, & lectured at Sadie Coles HQ (London), Arcadia Missa (London), Soft Opening (London), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Kunstverein Graftschaft Bentheim e.V. (DE), Carnegie-Mellon University, Emily Carr University of Art + Design (CA), Portland State University School of Art + Design (US), Open Engagement (US), Performance Space New York, La MaMa Theatre (NY), Goethe Institute Ireland, CCA Glasgow, Sophiensæle (DE), Wexner Center for the Arts (US), Columbus Museum of Art (US), & others.
Estefanía B. Flores is a visual artist and former architect who lives and works between London and Canary Islands. She studied architecture at Polytechnic University of Madrid [ETSAM] and Tokyo Institute of Technology [TOKODAI] and holds a master's degree in fine art from Goldsmiths University as the 2020's recipient of La Caixa Foundation Grant for Postgraduate studies. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at St. Chads, London; Xxirahii, London; Matadero Madrid, Spain; Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Spain; Rosa Stern Space, Germany; Zullo Gallery, USA; Athens Digital Arts Festival; hARTslane, London and AIR 3331, Japan among others.
SELECTED WORKS
New Publication
RIP LESSONS: NOTES ON DEVIANCE & DEATH’ by Jordan/Martin Hell collects tales from the crypt of missed connection; loss in all its forms, life cancellations & social suicides, infinities of ego death, loser-ism, gore & rot, Plath & Keats, algorithmic alchemies, selfie immolations, supernatural encounters with exes (be they newly converted werewolves or ghosts), the universal unknown, assassinations & serial killings (however real or imagined), & all things creepy &/or gross to get at death’s uncanny perversities as though divulging them around a camp fire upon earnest ears in the dead of night.
In prose, poetry, & interviews Hell weaves a text that circulates among both his own & the other works in Afterlife as a kind of critical unearthing of loss, grief, death, & mourning.
1ST EDITION PUBLISHED BY INDIGO+MADDER
£15
To buy a copy of the book, please contact info@indigoplusmadder.com
INSTALLATION VIEWS
To request a catalogue or receive further information, please get in touch: info@indigoplusmadder.com
Constellation, 2023
60.5 x 50.5 cm
Acrylic and flashe on canvas