Yasmin Whitlock

“When you look into the work of designer Yaz Whitlock, you can’t help but notice the dichotomy: elements of fertility and celebrations of the placenta are blended into symbols of birth control.” Pedro Milanezi

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“Lorsque vous examinez le travail du designer Yaz Whitlock, vous ne pouvez pas vous empêcher de remarquer la dichotomie: des éléments de fertilité et des célébrations du placenta sont mélangés dans des symboles de contrôle des naissances.” Pedro Milanezi

The Egg
Ten thousand years ago, there were 1 million people living on the planet, fifty years ago there were 3 billion of us and, by the end of this century, we are estimated to reach a population of 10 billion people! We have modified almost every part of our planet and, as we continue to grow, our need for vital resources increases exponentially. We human beings are the main force behind every global problem we face. The work is a kinetic sound sculpture resembling an egg. The cycle of life, reflected in the shape of the sculpture with neither beginning nor end, symbolizes fertility and reproduction – and thus questions the impact of overpopulation. Driven by real-time data generated by the Worldometer, the sculpture constantly changes its shape.

TETRAGRAMMATON
A dialogue between these two artists on themes of myth, ritual and meaning, as much about their exhaustion and propensity to bewilderment as any potential they may inhere, for recuperation for and by language, culture and society. Joey’s work, ‘Religiously observant’, is inspired by alchemical and occult ideas, the world of spirits and hallucinations. The wall print features a gold CGI blazon of the Tetragrammaton It references the Sumerian mythology of the Annunaki a race of ancient chthonic fertility Gods, subsequently inscribed in a series of publications by Zecharia Sitchin (a kind of elder statesman of conspiracy theorists worldwide) as descendants of aliens, who enslaved the human race to extract gold from the earth. John’s work similarly ranges over territories of opposition: between ancient and contemporary; mythic and kitsch; between the viscid and primordial. It takes as its subject the vector of congealment, in the Marxist sense of the way labour power is congealed in commodities and so forth, extending this metaphor into an aesthetics of myth and ritual, emptied out, flattened, compacted like a sedimentary layer of anthropocene garbage, for the post-historical epoch.The sound component provides an aural complement to this structure of refuse, exhaustion and abjection. Mixing pre- or post-linguistic utterances, grunts, groans, screaming: a kind of secular glossolalia chaotically interwoven with whalesong, deep techno and political oratory.

Эрнесто Нето
ارنستو نيتو
埃内斯托·内图
ארנסטו נטו
エルネスト·ネト
어네스토 네토

Humanóide

Ernesto Neto’s work reflects the participatory trend amongst Brazilian artists during the 1960s and 70s that is frequently associated with Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. Neto’s morbid sculptures and installations consist of elastic nylon or Lycra that is stitched into various organic shapes, which unfold in a womblike fashion around the spectator. Neto comments that his sculptures suggest ‘fertility, sexuality, touching, and kissing’, as well as atmospheric associations that arise out of the particular spatial presence and detailed texture of the surfaces.