Embracing the works of 19 artists, “MURMURS & ROARS” draws on the feminist scholar and critical theorist Sarah Ahmed’s reading of vulnerability as an opening – a site for connection, exposure, and potential transformation. For the writer, “vulnerability is not always a retreat from the world; it can also be a way of relating to others, a way of opening oneself to the potentiality of being transformed by encounter”.* In this group exhibition, by opening up to one’s and other’s refined sensibility, artists imagine it not as a condition to be overcome but as a site of resistance and relationality. While playing, longing, lamenting and dreaming, vulnerability is manifested here through the tension between holding and surrender. Artists’ voices grow into both soft murmurs and noisy roars – collective movements of proposed intimacy and action.

To begin with, Mikaela Montenegro’s (EC) sculptural installation reminds one of a disappearing horizon, a ghostly curtain of what is both the known and the unknown, an invitation to give in to the confusion, isolation, and fear as a way to accept oneself fully and prepare for ‘raw’ connections.

Similarly, Sigrid Luitsalu’s (EST) collages perform as emotional cartographies, where the autumnish dried Ginkgo Biloba’s leaves capture the melancholy and reminiscence of the lost (/death) and the (always) found (/life). In addition, Ciel Miao’s (CHN/USA) large scale mixed-media painting, created while trying to surrender to the process, but still being caught in-between discipline and madness, functions as a dream-scape and offers us a possibility to hold on to the fleeting moments of our memories, particularly those of one’s mother. In a similar vein, Llewellyn Skye’s (AU) paintings operate as a sculptural intervention, which offers an unexpected intrusion of beauty into a functional and in-animate space – a white cube’s gardenscape of sweet surrenders. On a playful note, drawing on one of Arnold Lobel’s short stories for children, entitled “A List” (1972), Sherly Fan’s (CHN) sculptural installation highlights the humorous side of placing oneself in the hands of a structured plan and accentuates the importance of being fluid. Likewise, George-O-‘Keeffe’ian-like non-human figures in Juan Luis Landaeta’s (VE) many-hued painting shape the materiality of primordial space, where his usage of color, form, interactions of tone, shape, and rhythms enkindle the feeling of timelessness and opening up. Furthermore, in a very Roy-Andersson’ish way, Victoria-Anne Rosales’ (USA) meticulously detailed micron pen drawings and a sculptural installation explores the absurdity and disruption in everyday life experiences and brings to the fore the desire and need for connection.

In parallel, Faye Harnest’s (CAN) tactile vibrant textile sculptures explore the themes of grief, mental health and disability politics and by weaving together the complex scenarios of challenge and joy, desire to facilitate safe spaces for shared vulnerability and care.

Correspondingly, in Giorgia Marras’ (IT) perspicacious painting, an iconic yellow smiley balloon, gliding in a distinctively representative landscape of Manhattan’s streets (still tethered by a human hand), occupies a central position both in terms of composition and affectively: as if a secret selfie, its reflective texture captures the gloominess of its holder, caught between what was and what could be. By the same token, Simla Iceli’s (TR) immersive painting immediately pulls one right into the heart of what looks like a site of an incident, whose mise-en-scene, composed of boys – wrestling or making out – surrounded by cakes, sparkles and bubbles playfully tackles the questions of identity, power dynamics, and the toolbox of discipline, punishment and reward. Following up with the critical rethinking of supremacy and domination, Jason Chung Yin Lam’s (HKG) interactive polyptych paintings mirror the world’s realities: every week the artist finds himself in a role of re-reporter as he meticulously selects the most memorable and influential images from online news reports and social media, preparing us for our blurred futures. Additionally, McKinna Anderson’s (USA) process-based sculptural installations, in which found, both animate and in-animate, objects are grown with crystals, aim to question our understanding of ‘time’ and the systems of power and beliefs focused on its management and description. Moreover, embodying a more self-reflective approach, Kaio Wu Hiu Nam’s (HKG) video functions as a conceptual self-satire by focusing on the mental anxieties of contemporary art and artists and by questioning an artistic identity and contemporary art systems, knowledge and elitism with sharp tongue and witty humour. Aiming for a collective re-thinking, Sining Zhu’s (CHN) video installation offers a de-colonizing artistic praxis: by tackling the practices of ‘outsider’ cleansings and questioning what it means to ‘truly’ belong, her situated and relational work is dedicated to explore the socio-economic registers of gentrification’s processes in the area of Chinatown (NYC). In parallel, Yinna Higuera’s (CO/EC) triptych photographs research into the complexities of migrant identity by delving into the relation between the woman and the land, pulsing with the affective nostalgia, search for belonging and questions of community. Correspondingly, in search of closeness and kinship, Summer McCroskey’s (USA) fragile but fierce double-sided textile paintings draw from queer studies to imagine the possible (and hopeful) queer futurities.

In a similar manner, concentrating on the futurities of our mental health, Rosaline Dou’s (CHN/USA) multidisciplinary  interactive installation focuses on the act of swallowing: both as an embodiment of repressed pain, and, in reverse, as a potentiality for a home feeling – as swallows, the birds, tend to create their nests from their own saliva. In addition, drawing from their experience as a young Black femme, Anika Kowalik’s (USA) audio-poetry installation delves into themes of authenticity, institutionalization, and ancestral healing, building a personal archive that is both demanding and reclaiming the (black) historical narrative. Finally, chasing sunsets and sunrises, Elina’s  Abdrakhmanova’s (UA/RU/NL) photographs act as tender portals to get closer to, to feel in your gut what the strive for togetherness is: she captures the everyday lives of New Yorkers and their surroundings under the city’s natural light, reflecting on the matters of intersectionality with novel softness.

*Ahmed, Sarah. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.