Historias del desorden Tales of disorder (Historias del desorden) is the title of the group show curated by Cristina Anglada at Galería Pelaires, which brings together works by Mercedes Azpilicueta, Sarah Bechter and Inês Zenha.
The selected works reveal stories in which the imagination resorts to disorder to outline a kind of alternative world in which instability and the proliferation of figures question the idea of veracity or univocal narrative. Disorder is explored as a secretion of hybrid, fluid and mixed forms in constant metamorphosis. The space is populated by a compilation of narrative fragments that explore the desire to confront the limitations of meaning in a world that demands clarity, order and efficiency. Images that heighten the senses and seem to exist in an expanded present, without regression or progress.
In his book Wild Things. The Disorder of Desire, Halberstam refers to the wild as an epistemological realm in which there is the possibility of alternative formulations with which to resist the impulses and interests of the paradigm of modernity. The wild functions as an absence of order, as a chaotic and entropic force of nature, as that which is beyond categorisation, as unbridled ways of being in the body, or also as that which becomes unpredictable, playing the role of prolific tools with which to re-imagine other ways of exploring life, relationships, bodies and desire beyond inherited norms.
Austrian artist Sarah Bechter (Vienna, 1989) uses the pictorial space as a board on which to play hide-and-seek through a continuous process in which she veils, erases and adds layers of paint, developing floating scenes that subvert the traditional antagonism between what is visible and what is not. Her paintings show the ontological density of tender, easily influenced worlds. They frequently challenge the viewer with narrative and fictional elements that are fuelled by a certain strangeness, while at the same time they articulate a constant ambivalence of meaning with which the artist makes the scene vibrate. She shows us everyday settings in which forms and figures intermingle, creating a representational space in which to explore how affection arises through touch in the domestic sphere.
Inês Zenha (Lisbon, 1995) is a Portuguese artist based in Paris. She focuses on painting, drawing, installation and ceramics to raise questions about the formal and conceptual representation of bodies. Zenha starts from the cultural and social conditioning factors that influence how we experience our own corporeality and our relationships in order to, through her works, try to plant visual metaphors that germinate into possible social transformations.
Her intensely coloured pastels depict intimate scenes starring hybrid characters, where plants and genderless humans are entangled between feathers, thorns and tails in an embrace. Her representations suggest a kind of utopia beyond gender and the hegemony of the human over the rest of the species, proposing an elusive fluidity instead. She uses plants as companions but also as models. As described by Emmanuel Coccia in his book The Life of Plants, plant life is the most paradigmatic form of being in the world; a form in which everything merges. Plants cover the earth but do not dominate or conquer it; their model is resilient and flexible, based on a collaborative architecture, without a command centre and deeply adaptive.
This pattern provided by the plants is perhaps close to other definitions of love that Inés seems to suggest with her ceramic sculptures. An idea that evokes the theoretical works in which bell hooks tried to provide more clarity to this concept. According to the theorist and activist, it is essential to redefine the term as a verb and an action; as an act of will in which responsibility becomes primordial. Because if we didn't have the tendency to forget that love is what love does, we would not use the word in ways that devalue and degrade its meaning.
Also on view are several works from the series Bestiario de Lengüitas by the Argentinean artist Mercedes Azpilicueta (La Plata, 1981). This mutant project began in 2017 as a script for a yet-to-be-performed play. It has its roots in the fantasy genre, while also drawing inspiration from medieval proto-scientific books. It revives not only some of the earliest ecofeminist theories, but also forgotten knowledge such as alchemy and the use of natural medicinal herbs, as well as textile and dyeing craft techniques. All this is combined with neo-Baroque poetry, failed translations, fantastic beings, witches, healers and legends from medieval Europe and pre-Hispanic America. The exhibit features a series of pieces on paper that reveal many of the characters of this script; mutant roles that seem to play hide-and-seek with their own appearance between states.
Also on display is a two sided tapestry entitled Potatoes, Riots and Other Imaginaries through which she explores both the invisible modes of social organisation and the formation of intimacy and solidarity in everyday life. Remnants show the women who started the potato riots in Amsterdam (1917) facing hunger after the war, along with the fight against the systemic violence suffered by women in Latin America (#NiUnaMenos). The rest of the fabric is covered by scenes featuring different types of care provided by nurses, housewives or domestic workers. With this piece, the artist creates some sort of collage that highlights the socio-economic value of domestic work and collectivity as a polyphonic driving force for change.
The three artists together use narrated imagination to undo and rebuild worlds. The works on display capture scenes where we can consider and explore other ways of being, of relating, and of creating community; a coexistence that explores a different approach to kinship and belonging, tending towards a broader idea of home where affection, interdependence and mutual support are placed in the foreground. And it is by easing the requirements that have been necessary to be in the world, that we make more room for others to live in it (Sarah Ahmed), creating a house the walls of which are light, flexible, adjustable to one's own development and which insinuate a trembling way of inhabiting the world, understanding trembling as the result of being affected by something/someone and considering fragility as something inherent to our existence, not so much as a lack, but as a strength.
Cristina Anglada
