Kenophobic Pantomimes

Ohan Breiding, Poppy Delta Dawn, John Dillard, Enore, Rafael Perez Evans, Diogo Gama, Maria Joranko, Kester Messan, Andreas Mallouris, Rebeca Romero, Robert Rose, Devon Narine-Singh, Rita Borralho Silva

Guest curated by Earth Aengel

April 1 - May 6, 2023

Kenophobic Pantomimes brings together an international queer conversation on how we collectively and unapologetically push our visibility into performative hetero-centric colonial spaces of capital. Kenophobia is the fear of wide-open spaces, and in this case a useful evocation of response for the queer practices of this exhibition to counteract the fearful aesthetics of the violent and industrialized modernism that is continued to be upheld in contemporary art. In this hetero-centric performative value system, we respond in kind. We crowd and fill the sterile white cube of supremacy and flood its veins with “loud” and unnatural ways of being: to wipe away centuries of classification and systems that never had queerness in mind. All in efforts to re-world queer-being back into the wild, devoid of homogenized truths.

Earth Aengel feels that gender studies professor and writer Jack Halberstam describes queer-centric wildness best in their excerpt from the Serpentine Podcast when Jack states “My work pays a lot of attention to oppositional forces like order and disorder and why we tend to think about apocalypse as a kind of disorderly and disordering force that sweeps through terrains of consciousness, in fact it is order that is the problem with human centrist thought and disorder... or wildness... or anarchy... or declassified knowledges represent the possibility of being in different types of ecologies, or being in relationships to other ways of thinking. ”

While Earth disagrees that Queer as an umbrella term has lost its political charge, they agree with Halberstam’s spoken description on wildness and finds inspiration in Halberstam’s perspective on the aesthetics of the unnatural in terms of queer expressions: “Nature has been used to marginalize and pathologize sexual minorities. In fact, the earliest formulation of homosexuality was as a crime against nature. So, where the classification of activity as sinful no longer had purchase, the new category was unnatural. They go on to describe how artists take up the space of the unnatural, where they: “simply take up the charges of the unnatural and inhabit it. And in many ways, that’s the definition of Camp. Saying, you think we are unnatural?! you don’t even know the half of it AND GOING ALL OUT with kind of not just an unnatural set of performances, but anti-natural. My book is interested in the post-natural as a domain of queer and other kinds of resistant politics and poetics. “

Victoria Sin later summarizes the feeling of the positive and limitless forms of being queer in nature: I think that one of the most amazing things about being queer is that it gives us this other perspective, this other standpoint to look at the world from that is not the dominant one, a view from elsewhere as I like to say. The sense that things are not what we’ve been told they are. There are always more perspectives out there. Kenophobic Pantomimes enters the current of queer-centric thought and practices that disrupt the flow of hetero-centric capital. It takes chaotic form into the sculptural, the hand-made, and collaged video work to best communicate this radical limitless opposition. In its chaos, it attempts to avoid the homogeneous classification of colonial aesthetics. International artists: Ohan Breiding, Poppy Delta Dawn, John Dillard, Enorê, Rafael Pérez Evans, Diogo Gama, Maria Joranko, Kester Messan, Andreas Mallouris, Rebeca Romero, Rob Rose, Devon Narine-Singh, and Rita Borrahlo Silva bring us into this moment of queer chaos, community, and communication.

Ohan Breiding works in photography, drawing, and video installation, exploring the intersections of trans temporality, ecological care, and collaborative processes. They have presented their work at ICA LA, Photo LA, LAMAG, Oakland Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Southern Exposure and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Haus N Athens, Sharjah Art Museum, IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art Belgium, LAXART, Human Resources LA, A.I.R Gallery NYC, the Armory Center for the Arts, Hallwalls Contemporary Art and has upcoming exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Zürich, Frac des Pays de la Loire Nantes and at WCMA (Williams College Museum of Art). They are a 2022 LMCC Governors Island Artist-in-Residence, a 2021 TBA (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary) Academy Ocean Space Fellow, a 2019 Millay Colony Resident and a 2018 Shandaken: Storm King Resident. They have received numerous awards including the 2023 Class of 1945 World Fellowship Award, the 2022 Hellman Award, the 2019 SIFF (Swiss International Film Festival) Award for The Rebel Body, a short film made with Shoghig Halajian and the participation of Silvia Federici (author of Caliban and the Witch), the 2017 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Award and the 2012 DAAD Award. Their practice has been written about in Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, BOMB, Whitewall, among others. Ohan Breiding is an Assistant Professor in the Art and Art History Department at Williams College in Massachusetts and is represented by Ochi Projects in Los Angeles.

Poppy Delta Dawn is an artist and curator making work about how we perceive the world through disseminating information like diagrams and tutorials. She holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, both in Fiber. Delta Dawn has held residencies and fellowships at Caldera Arts, Offshore Residency, the Studios at MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE Residency, and Wassaic Project, among others, and has participated in workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Penland School of Crafts. Her most recent projects have included a solo exhibition at H Space Gallery (Cleveland, OH) and a Media Arts Fellowship at BRIC Arts Media (Brooklyn, NY), as well as exhibitions at The Heidelberg Project (Detroit, MI), Hatch Art (Hamtramck, MI), Zürcher Gallery (New York City), and The Yard (New York City). Poppy Delta Dawn is a Visiting Artist Professor in Fiber & Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

John Dillard (B. Gulfport, MS. 1995). A tempest, a cyclone, or a hurricane. The enormity of life is no comparison to the possibilities of art. Our vagrancies in love and trespasses against one another are only a microcosm. The son, an heir to a cattle farm, but born to turn on the pole. These simple perversions fail to represent the grand devastation that is living.

Enorê is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist currently based in London and working with 3D printed ceramics, textile, and video. Their work revolves around the fluidity of digital media into physicality and back, the modes of translation that arise from this kind of dynamics and how this relates to ways in which the body processes information. Using 3D scans and digital data to establish links between physical and digital realms, they bring into physical existence elements which can normally only be mediated through digital technology. They have recently exhibited with Bloomberg New Contemporaries and been commissioned by Contemporary And to create a new video series.

Rafael Pérez Evans (He/ Him/ They) Spanish – Welsh (b. Málaga 1983) lives and works in London & Spain. He received both an MFA & amp; a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College in London. His work has been exhibited internationally with solo-exhibitions including: Handful at The Henry Moore Institute, UK (2021), Pavo Realengo at Nogueras Blanchard Gallery, Barcelona (2017); Pararrayo at Abierto Theredoom Gallery, Madrid (2017). Two-person & group exhibitions include: Thief, Invigilate at C3A Museum, Spain (2020) ; Salvation at Saatchi Gallery (2020) ; Unpacking, Wheels at South London Gallery & Leeds Art Gallery, UK (2019); The Devil’s Bird – Ornithomancy at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2019) ; L’Dounne – Divination at Matadero, Madrid (2018) & Queima at Despina, Rio de Janeiro (2015).Pérez Evans’s artworks are usually associated with questions around sculpture, rurality, the urban and conditions of the South. Oscillating between bare, futile, and humorous forms here configures ready-mades, live materials, and gestures into places of paradox and disorientation. Evans investigates shame in queer and rural communities, drawing out evocative installations which are often charged with anger and hope.

Diogo Gama is a London based artist from Lisbon. He embroidered a sail during his participation at Arnis Residency in Germany and painted an homoerotic ballroom on the walls of the upper floor at Galeria Zé dos Bois in Lisbon. He’s been exhibiting regularly across the UK and Europe, holds an MFA Fine Art from Goldsmiths University of London and has his work included in the latest edition by Pilot Press London. His artistic practice emerges from questions around the body and identity in relation to immediate surroundings and influences. Working with coarse and large-scale embroideries on fabric, installation, film and sculpture his works show an ever-changing configuration of personal narratives and the exploration of queer identity relating to camp aesthetics, popular culture, and the bizarre. His first solo show “Teleny” is opening soon at Robbie von Kampen in London.

Maria Joranko AKA Foxy Azucar (She/They) is a London based American artist, performer and facilitator who is unapologetic about (re)claiming space. Foxy activates spaces to create experiential moments that serve as sites of power that explore love and the different facets of community through the lens of race, queer culture, gender, nature, and magic. She is specifically interested in examining how healing, transformation, and change can be presented as possibilities within an arts context. Foxy was formerly based in Columbus, OH and while there, she was a member of MINT collective and artist in residence at Cart pushers. Currently she is working towards her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths. She is also Co-President of Black Gold Collective and is in residence through the Goldsmiths CCA Residents program. She has various upcoming projects at Safehouse Peckham, Chisenhale Studios, and Arthouse Wakefield.

Kester Messan @kestermessan (b.1998 Togo Africa) Inspired by a culture of models and influencers, the possibility of going viral, and the promise of death, Kester Messan creates sculptural illustrations that combine collage, poetry, and performance techniques to make observations about the society he lives in; a society that’s invested in the death of Black, queer and poor people. He seeks to reveal capitalism and design as two of the most powerful elements in that society, and that rarely do things just happen. Working with the same materials as photographers, bloggers, marketers, and construction workers, Kester Messan develops visual languages that translate a tension between old world values and his own desire for something else. Kester is based in London while in school for his MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Andreas Mallouris (He/ Him/ They) lives and works in Nicosia and Athens. He is a professional Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeon and holds a PhD in Plastic Surgery. He holds a BA (Hons) Fine Arts, UWE (UK), and is currently an MFA Fine Arts student at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is co-founder and director of korai project space in Nicosia. Andreas’s practice encompasses sculpture, installation, photography, drawings, video, and performance. It addresses the position of the body in relation to its history, biopolitics, hierarchies, and mythologies.

Rebeca Romero is an interdisciplinary artist born in Peru and based in London. Through a range of media that includes sculpture, textiles, sound, performance, and video she explores concepts of diasporic identity, truth, fiction, and their relationship to the digital age. Romero received an MFA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2020), and she is a recipient of the Arts Council of England ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ grant (2021). Selected exhibitions include ‘Oracles and Algorithms’, Copperfield, London (2022), ‘and so on’, Das Weisse Haus, Vienna, (2022), ‘Promises from Paradise’ The New Bridge Project, Newcastle (2022), ‘Post-Khe’, Brutal, Lima (2022) ’Bloomberg New Contemporaries’, Firstsite, Colchester & South London Gallery, London (2021), ‘The Obsolete in Reverse’, Spring season Gallery, London (2020), ‘London Grads Now,’ Saatchi Gallery, London (2020) & ‘The one that’s always there, the one that came late, the one that never arrived, the one that wasn’t invited’, SB34-The Pool, Brussels (2019). Her text/sound work has been featured in platforms like New Writing with New Contemporaries, South London Gallery, London (2022) and Future Artefacts, RTM.FM (2021).

Robert Rose (b.1995 MA) Rose gathers found materials to create and dismantle realms of vacancy with stillness and dreamlike neverlands. He takes the essence of the outsider- the wonderer, that out of necessity eternally interlopes with moments of blending in. In his paintings and sculptures, he cashes out at the scene of his escape or abandon. Nature responds to this, creating the exchange of power and surrender to the worlds’ fantastical delight.

Devon Narine-Singh @devonnarines is a filmmaker and curator. His works have screened at Prismatic Ground, Microscope Gallery, YOUKI International Youth Media Festival, NOFLASH Video Show, UltraCinema, The New School and The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival. He has presented screenings and presentations at The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Maysles Cinema, NYU Cinema Studies and UnionDocs. Along with Alia Ayman and Suneil Sanzgiri, Narine-Singh was one of the programmers in residency for the 2020–21 Flaherty NYC. He has a BFA in Filmmaking from SUNY Purchase and a MA in Screen Studies at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College. His writing has been published in Dedza Scrapbook for Dedza Film’s first release Who Will Start Another Fire. He currently teaches at The Rhode Island School of Design. Thematically Narine-Singh’s works use found materials to address personal histories within political landscapes. Research interests include illness, Intimacy, pop culture as self-expression and recovery.

RITA BORRALHO SILVA (b. 2000) is an interdisciplinary artist from Lisbon, Portugal. In 2022, she graduated from the School of Fine Arts and Design of Caldas da Rainha (Portugal), spending the last year of her Fine Arts BA in the University of Arts Poznań, in the Intermedia department (Set 2021- Jun 2022). In 2018, she obtained a level 4QRQ specialization in Theater Design from António Arroio Artistic School (Lisbon, Portugal). She has participated in various projects, art residencies, collective exhibitions, performance shows, both in Portugal and abroad. She’s a poet, dancer, and visual researcher. Her practice sparks from a poetic look on language, sound, and symbol, shown in a series of performative readings, visual performances and storytelling. “My work is about me. It’s about my body... its memory. And therefore, it’s about you. For we coexist. Through the multidimensional possibilities of language and sign, I search for the mechanic translation of cultural and individual identity into poems and sound waves. The poem is created in symbiosis with the action and sound. First comes the motion, then the sound waves, and only after the mischievous translation into language and sign. In an incessant quest to unravel the metaphors hidden within reality, I thrive in rebel, nomadic, anti-system places that potentiate Catharsis.”

Guest Curator

Earth Ængel (They/ Them) Earth Ængel is an international trans artist and curator that creates from their own non-binary gender fluid experience, navigating fantastical queer ecology through the dysphoria of hetero-centric capitalism. As human extinction becomes more of an embodied collective surrender, Earth Ængel creates a final homage to the human condition by abandoning capitalistic ideologies. Earth Ængel does not attempt to shame these man-made values but ingests it while laundering through its consumption and laying by its deathbed- grieving, consoling the outcome- its funeral, and resurrects it into the archive of predetermined aesthetics, bringing it to the afterlife. As Aesthetics and material use are examined in their roots of white supremacist hetero-centric values, Earth Ængel uses heat related practices to melt it all down/together with glass, hot body wax that crystalizes with jewels, metal, and anything that will burn, melt, mold, and fuse.

Earth Ængel primarily works with other LGBTQUIA artists often examining what is different about how queerness builds, grows, makes, communicates, and interacts. Earth Ængel hopes that queer centered values are truly a bottomless well of opportunity, growth, rebuilding, and discovery inclusive in its nature running parallel and skimming the surface of our current world, all blending into one.

Earth Ængel is a recent MFA graduate of Goldsmiths University in London. They live and work in Brooklyn, NY with their partner Rob Rose, where they have a separate art practice as an art duo, called earthr. In their art process, they switch roles where one asks the other to complete their idea of an artwork. This is a practice in power dynamics, labor issues, and the struggles and joys of queer relationships. They are represented by Sunend Gallery.