Flowers for LH

The Horse, Dublin
9 September to 10 October 2021

However art makes itself evident, it shall remain, above all, raw source material in all its natural, unstable, physical, chaotic and crystalline states: solid, liquid, colloidal and gaseous. It is the joy of energy. — Abraham Cruzvillegas

“Dynamic Power,” curated by Suzanne Egeran, is the second exhibition at The Horse, a new project space in central Dublin. The show features new drawings and a performance by Katie Holten, a film by experimental filmmaker Cynthia Madansky, and sculpture by Abraham Cruzvillegas and Matthew Wilkinson. Also included are newly commissioned NFTs by Tala Madani, Julia Scher, and Elif Uras. The sale of these NFTs will benefit women-led institutions, including the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, the ICA LA in Los Angeles, and the ICA Philadelphia. These institutions contextualize contemporary culture within the socio-political conditions of our time and provide a critical link to many of the issues raised here.

What happens when you give power to the people? A simple question with complex implications. Matthew Wilkinson’s installation is part sculpture, part power generator. It is intended to be installed on a riverbank so that the rush of water generates power, which the artist will offer gratis. Participants will veer off the grid, an increasingly rare space in our “after time” defined by virtual reality and all things digital.

Of course power implies more than just electricity, though our streaming and mining habits consume plenty of that. The very fabric of society is being questioned here: the structures that define our options and influence our decisions. Given control, what would we manifest?

A sense of utopian promise pervades the crypto-realm. Digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum operate within a system that records transactions on a blockchain. Participants can buy or sell tokens directly through cryptocurrency exchanges, peer-to-peer. As a result, banks and other intermediaries are eradicated, opening the way for a new realm of decentralized financial products without middlemen and the fees and potential data breaches that come with them. Power to the people, indeed.

The NFT (non-fungible token) transforms the infinitely reproducible digital file into a unique, tradable token. Make that file digital art and in an instant culture has become currency.

But who is buying and who is selling in this expanded new marketplace? And how does that impact what is being bought and sold? The blockchain’s libertarian roots have not necessarily yielded an egalitarian space. NFTs by Tala Madani, Julia Scher, and Elif Uras address the power structures at work in the digital realm and beyond.

Cynthia Madansky’s Flowers for LH reflects on the last play written by Lorraine Hansberry entitled What Use Are Flowers? Part of Madansky’s ongoing Radical Feminist Film Series, a series of short 16mm films that engage with writings by international radical feminists, Flowers for LH interweaves footage shot in New Mexico with dance performance and excerpts from the play, a post-apocalyptic fantasy in which Hansberry reflects on the role of beauty in our world. “It’s unclear what has happened to civilization, but the clear reference—given the time, and Hansberry’s global political concerns—is to the bomb.” Madansky builds on this with footage of New Mexico’s nuclear test sites, waste sites and uranium mines, located on or nearby ancestral land belonging to native American tribes. Like the hermit in Hansberry’s play who struggles to explain to a confused child what use flowers have, we maintain hope, searching for meaning in this deadly fallout.

— Suzanne Egeran

Katie Holten, who represented Ireland in the 50th Venice Biennial, presents three new large-scale drawings from her Love Letters series in which the artist writes letters and words in ink and then presses them, like flower petals. The intricate drawings look like hieroglyphics, but on close examination the mysterious messages can be deciphered. The drawings depict the words of Countess Markievicz, Mary Robinson, and Flossie Donnelly*. Each of these dynamic women have helped shape Ireland with words and actions inspiring collective energy and direct action that have resulted in real change.

Alongside the drawings, Holten shares a petition to protect Ardee Bog near her mother’s house in County Louth. Bogs are the Irish “rainforest,” storing 75% of the soil’s organic carbon and representing the largest store of carbon

in the Irish landscape. Together with her neighbours in Ardee, Holten has created a Community Action Group that will hopefully save Ardee Bog. Please join us! You will find all 800+ pages with 9,5000 signatures displayed in a stack on a small hand cart that the artist will wheel to the Dáil where she will deliver the petition to elected officials.

Likewise, a revolutionary spirit pervades the sculptures of Abraham Cruzvillegas. The artist assembles found objects often sourced from a particular place, [in this case Dublin]. By combining and reusing them, Cruzvillegas transforms his materials, giving them a new life. He calls this approach and attitude autoconstrucción, or “self- construction,” a philosophy born out of Mexico City where the artist grew up in a community that constructed their houses bit by bit, as needed, at various times, an approach necessitated by limited means. This process is a metaphor for our ever-changing selves.

Themes of empowerment and transformation run through this exhibition. As does the notion that by harnessing collective energy we might create change. This is certainly true in the crypto-realm, which is creating new possibilities for artists. The potential for generating economic power is immense, and can be directed to achieve significant results – as we intend our platform to do for women artists and women-led institutions. We will further explore the politics of participation in a virtual panel discussion in late September.