Alembic l: Mystic Body
Elizabeth Mputu & Faith Wilding
27 January – 10 March 2018 (preview Fri 26 January 6-9pm)
Open Wed-Sat 12-6pm
Events:
Fri 10 March 5.30-7pm: Faith Wilding lecture, Goldsmiths
Sat 10 March 4-6pm: Faith Wilding Book of Hildegard + Reading (extracts from forthcoming publication with Intellect Books)> more info here
Left-Right: Faith Wilding, Body & Soul, 1992-2018, Book of Hildegard, 1983, Life Lessons, 1985, Leaf Scroll, 1986 and Seawomb, 1969, Elizabeth Mputu, Hotspot Name: Termite Hill and the Password is DriedBones, 2018.
Faith Wilding, Body & Soul, 1992-2018, chemistry vessels, muslin fabric, coloured ink. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Faith Wilding, Leaf Scroll, 1986, gouache, pen and ink on watercolour paper. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Detail of Leaf Scroll. Photo: Lucy A. Sames.
Faith Wilding, Book of Hildegard, 1983, gouache, collage, ink on cartridge paper. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Detail of Book of Hildegard. Photo: Lucy A. Sames.
Faith Wilding, Life Lessons, 1985, gouache, collage, ink on cartridge paper. Photo: Tim Bowditch
Faith Wilding, Seawomb, 1969, woven textile. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Detail of Seawomb. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Elizabeth Mputu, Hotspot Name: Termite Hill and the Password is DriedBones, 2018. Mixed media incl. tin, dirt, compost, Vitex Agnus-Castus, copper wire, copper pennies, brown sugar, menses, cloth, protection beads, string. Commissioned by Res. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Detail of Hotspot Name: Termite Hill and the Password is DriedBones. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Detail of Hotspot Name: Termite Hill and the Password is DriedBones, with offering of Vitex Agnus Castus. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Elizabeth Mputu, Zebola E-pothecary, 2018. Commissioned by Res.
Mystic Body, the first exhibition in the Alembic programme at Res., includes historical artist books, scrolls, drawings and textile work by Faith Wilding from 1969 to 1992 alongside a new commission by Orlando based artist and herbalist Elizabeth Mputu. The artists share an engagement with the potency of holistic healing, drawn from ancient texts and cultures.
Faith Wilding’s Body and Soul (1992), a sculptural time-based work with coloured pigment bleeding between two alchemical vessels, provided a guiding emblematic system of transference and transmutation during the development of the Alembic programme. Engagement with alchemical imagery and methodology is evident throughout Wilding’s career, including her study of illuminated manuscripts, in particular works by the 11th century female mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Concerning herbals, cycles of birth, death and rebirth, Book of Hildegarde (1983) connects to others made by the artist during the same period including Life Lessons (1985). Within this work images of hybrid organic matter- part leaf, organ and vessel – are combined with diaristic passages in the form of poetic incantations. Words circle leaf-like patterns and cocoons, building psychic landscapes that suggest ‘matter’ is both ecological and affective; “THE FORMS OF MATTER- THE FORMS THAT MATTER … TENEMENTS OF DREAD … TUNNEL OF LUST”.
Leaf Scroll (1986) includes dense illustrations of bodies reminiscent of those found in medieval bestiaries. Wilding’s composite animals are diagrammed within geometric and cellular patterns, depicting a multi-species reconfiguration, sympoiesis, or making-with non-human tentacular network described by Haraway. The deep red tousled tentacles of Wilding’s earliest work in the exhibition, Seawomb (1969) continues this contemporary evocation for ‘making kin’ with the planet’s non-human inhabitants [1]. This woven woolen sculpture is being shown for the first time in nearly forty years and harks back to a significant early period of Wilding’s career and indeed the trajectory of feminist practices in California, representing an interest in goddess imagery and the figure of the female mystic.
Elizabeth Mputu’s practice articulates a mutual dependence between holistic epistemologies, POC communities and online social networks. For Alembic, Mputu takes the healing Congolese dance ritual of Zebola alongside traditional herbal remedies as elements of an holistic gameplay environment developed through digital platform NewHive and new sculptural work. The online commission Zebola: E-pothecary, will be released in three parts throughout the exhibition and invites the player to embark on a learning mission related to nutrition and the energetic qualities of herbal medicine, drumming, trance and meditation.
In the gallery Hotspot Name: Termite Hill and the Password is DriedBones is a compost-sculpture that acts as a ‘hotspot’ for Mputu’s cultural roots referencing Congolese minkisis – objects inhabited by spiritual entities. Imagined as an antenna, the sculpture suggests a radiating energy field of connectivity across both ancestral and geographic planes. Here, wi-fi signals and digital network technology are aligned with spiritual matters and organic networks in the form of a structure akin to a termite hill emerging from the earth. In Congolese tradition, termite hills are signifiers of the dead in a transition period from physical human body to a force of nature. At the foot of the sculpture, Vitex Agnus Castus, a herb traditionally used for relieving premenstrual tension is available to take away. Please consult with a herbalist before consuming this herbal offering.
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Alembic is a programme of three intergenerational duo exhibitions, a publication, events and online commission. It brings together new commissions by Annabelle Craven-Jones, Elizabeth Mputu, Ayesha Tan Jones and Maggie Roberts, developed in connection to cyberfeminist materials from the media art library of curator Kathy Rae Huffman. These new commissions are exhibited alongside significant historical works by artists Faith Wilding and Shu Lea Cheang brought to the UK for the first time, forming a scope of works spanning from 1969 to the contemporary. Alembic celebrates the shared affinity across these generations, where the continual critique and transformation of the political biases of networked communication is practiced through multiple feminisms and strategies of queering technology.
Unfolding how the materiality of the body (recognising agency and affect beyond the human) becomes a site for digital and alchemical transmutation, Alembic takes its name from a form of alchemical beaker [2]. The process of distilling chemicals between two beakers connected by a tube, mirrors the pipelines of digital communication technology, where transmission of data constitutes an abstraction. Considering the body as alchemical vessel, it contains the processes of mutation: virus, hacking, healing and encoding. Mythologies emerge through these processes of alterity, as part of a greater cosmological and ecological network of co-dependencies.
Further activities in the series include:
24 March – 28 April 2018 (preview Fri 23 March) Maggie Roberts & Ayesha Tan Jones
11 May – 16 June 2018 (preview Thurs 10 May) Shu Lea Cheang & Annabelle Craven-Jones
A resulting publication will be launched later in 2018
Elizabeth Mputu (b.1993, Orlando, USA) is a digital/performance artist and holistic practitioner of Congolese descent. Their work focuses on the artist’s ability to grapple with sexuality, gender, taboo, health, healing and African spirituality filtered through the performative and digital medium. Mputu draws on their experience as an established and active presence within online QTIPOC communities. Their project Cyber Serenity provides services in the area of art therapy, holistic healing, internet related self-care and spiritual consultation.
https://liz100percent.squarespace.com/
Faith Wilding (b.1943, Paraguay, based in Rhode Island, USA) is an artist, writer and educator, widely known for her contribution to the progressive development of feminist art movement in 1970’s California, and 1980-90s cyberfeminist networks, as part of the collective subRosa. Her multidisciplinary work as an artist addresses aspects of the somatic, psychic, and sociopolitical history of the body. Currently, Wilding is a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the MFA in Visual Art Program at Vermont College of the Union Institute and University. Her solo exhibition ‘un-Natural Parabals’ is currently touring in the USA
http://faithwilding.refugia.net/
Alembic is co-curated by Sarah Jury, Helen Kaplinsky and Lucy A. Sames.
For further information email contact@beingres.org or visit www.beingres.org
Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England
