Éter Space ౨ৎ
an exhibition of intimacy & networks of care
Ethereal Maison, a house beyond the home. Ethereal Maison aims to critically recuperate the inhabitance of the place. Questioning the notions of safe spaces, family and home and their transcendence into the virtual as well as physical realm as “third spaces”, it focuses on co-existing and building networks of care in a world of exclusion.
— Curatorial Manifesto for Éter Space
Ethereal Maison — directed by Sally Hernandez, co-curated by Jessica Ingram — is a ‘project on the fluidity of matter, safe spaces, identities and art’. It is an exhibition existing in and amidst a home. It resembles Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge — that sense that the occupying artworks are not objects but a communion of subjects, themselves residents in this peculiar gallery-house.
As we move through the exhibition, our way of seeing is renewed. The architecture (walls, furniture, silverware — the unregarded inhabitants of a home) is transmuted under the gaze of the artwork. The manner in which we occupy and curate a space is itself an artistic praxis. Are we not always living with craft? a chair whispers, discreetly, to me. Watch for the spirit that quietly animates the things we make and hold and love — watch for the tears of things.
(A reading list, on this, to come.)
girl’s diary (recovered), circa 2012
I am invited to contribute an entity to the house — a book, something for visitors to pick up and leaf through, something tactile and live.
(This is the first time my work is being presented in a formal exhibition context. I have a week. It is not an unalarming timeframe.)
I base the book on the journals of my girlhood — it is a book of secrets, dreams, hidden pain. Framed as if excavated from some dark corner of a child’s bedroom, holding the residue of that now uncanny site of play. It is full of ribbons and crosses, closed with a silver heart padlock (and heart key). Cries, almost indecipherable, are tucked away behind tissue or engraved into tracing paper. The book sits next to my pamphlet ‘Bindweed’ and my magazine lunulae, a library in miniature. I was a strange and often lonely child, and lived in my head; I was sustained by my solipsistic fantasy worlds. Here is a glimpse of these worlds, a beating heart splayed on the page.
I hope to honour my girl-self with this book. To do this, I uncover her archive. I find my sticker collection, icons of Strawberry Shortcake cradled next to Hello Kitty and doe-eyed animals. It is a repository of all my early fixations. Then there are the diaries I kept as an imagined character (one Thursday I apparently went on a trip to ‘Glitter Island’), then the birthday cards I would cross out to write in new names and messages. Again and again I tried to write my dream selves into a kind of pale existence.
Then my efforts at a comprehensive dictionary, complete with images; I have always been a little consumed by language. As a child I would write out in pencil all the words I loved — as if writing the word would allow me to own the referent itself. I do the same now, make a list that sidles from the delicate (‘rosewater’, ‘vial’) to the devout (‘salvation’, ‘confession’) to the uneasy (‘mercy’, ‘funereal’).
I collect words, like harvesting pearls. I take them from the books I love. sometimes I write out full stories, so I can have them. if I own the word, I own the thing. I have so many things.
— entry, from girl’s diary (recovered), circa 2012
The book is hand-bound with red thread — tiny stitched up wounds. To bind is to break, just a little. (I think of Sally’s work, the blooming of blood within a resin frame — beautiful and visceral.)
I cut my knees open in the playground. I am not yet used to a different kind of blood.
I don’t know where to put my sadness. I wonder if it goes away when you grow up.
My present and my past bleed together. Each iteration of my self, jostling for space in this one body, spiraling inwards in one endless cycle.
exhibition opening ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡
And the stars of the sky fell to the earth like unripe figs dropping from a tree shaken by a great wind
— Revelations 6:13
On the opening night, Stephanie Ritzema, all in white, carefully lays out a scarf, a lemon, a notebook. Lights a candle and props it in a china mug. Makes a shrine for herself, a sanctified space inside of the house. She stands and reads aloud three poems, on Cyprus and the women of her life.
You kill me if you do not eat -
I grew this with my very bones.
The lemons too, the walnut cake,
the grapes, the men,
the passion fruits.
— from ‘Zoe’s House’, Stephanie Ritzema
Ventcislava Nekova holds a ceramic workshop in the garden. Asks me, ‘what would your child self make?’ And then, ‘what would your adult self make?’ I find this difficult — I don’t know how well I can separate the two. I think of the rabbit girls I made when young, the demon-horned creatures I make now. I turn the clay over in my palms, into my fingernails. It takes many forms, and in the end I have fashioned a clay mermaid (more sinister than intended), and an anemone for her bed.
Summer-Jade Morrison shows a film, composed of delicate, moving parts — a doll’s room, flying pigs, a lock of hair, a frilled bed. In the cabinet below is a puppet-theatre.
On the gilt frame mirror is pasted a poem by Ester Frieder — the words inscribe themselves onto your reflection, imprint onto your skin. This is part of her practice, the ways in which words create/curate the visual self:
[Ester] worldbuilds a window to a post-wage labour life where lingering, self-mythologizing, poeticizing, co-creating, and pondering can form part of our daily habits – where the capacity for dreaming is not regarded as distractive or inefficient, but rather as a panacea (maybe the only one out there) that animates our cyclical nature.
— from @ethe_rrealm
Below the mirror is a small shrine: a burning candle and burnt match, embroidered handkerchief (‘Osamu’s Mother Goose’), a trinket box and a cracked china vessel threaded together by yarn. This is Marina Lalovic’s manifesto — ‘Time heals all’ — a spider’s web of association. The fissures of trauma remain visible amidst the gestures of mending.
The triptych of paintings (not pictured) by Lau Yee Vanessa Fong is a translation of spiritual harmony into the visual sphere:
[They] intricately weave a narrative of interdependence among a holy tree, its nourishing water fountain, and the gentle light that graces it. All together symbolises a celestial ladder connecting the sky, land, and water, highlighting the beautiful codependency between human creation and nature.
Moving upstairs, a mobile by Gabby (Milky Moth Teeth) hangs in the stairwell: it suspends the erotic and the unnerving, figures caught in saccharine pink bondage. The kind of sweet that makes one’s stomach turn. I want to hang it above my bed.
In the bedroom, I lie and watch the projected film Stuck in the Motherboard by Marisa Müsing — a documentary, gentle and empathetic, of a cyborg, made from the ‘computer womb that [Marisa] sees as her mother’, her home the ‘cyberrealm of the internet’.
It is an exhibition of connection — human, creative, digital. I leave with new friends and a deep well of gratitude — my heartfelt thanks particularly to Sally for inviting me to this project, and to Asa for binding my book. I am so very full of love. ꩜
please also note I was unfortunately unable to witness all of the performances or write about every piece, as much as I would have loved to — while the exhibition has now closed, you can find more information about the artists here
and, happy happy Spring! merry Ostara! I hope the sun shines for you.
Anna ☽
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