Healers

Jesse Darling is interested in the myths that underline modernity – the constructs that are at the foundations of our religious, political, cultural and medical institutions.
Steel, a material favoured by the artist, is historically associated with the complex system of extraction and colonialism on which the West was built. In the sculptures presented here, bent and elongated pieces of steel are assembled together to conjure flimsy, fragile bodies, at odds with the notions of industrial progress and domination that the material usually evokes. They are faceless yet contorted in deep expression; while looking at them, one can’t help but attribute movement and even feelings to them. vers top seems to be enthusiastically throwing itself forward in a kneeling dance move, while the piece of railing in The Road Extinct (municipal fragment) appears to be awkwardly gesturing towards us, its open hand holding out a plastic tree like a precious offering.

Darling describes his work as ‘a bunch of visual and verbal puns slung together with magical thinking’ *. Magical thinking is the human tendency to confer agency to a person’s thoughts, actions and words in influencing the course of the world. Indeed Darling’s sculptures compel us to confer life and anthropomorphic qualities to inanimate objects, to find reassurance and companionship in them – a sacred feeling of not being quite so alone. The sculptures’ fragility becomes a reflection of our own. Through these works, Darling awakens our intuitive way of relating to the world, the “imaginary” that Glissant talks about. As Darling deconstructs the myths of modernity, their works also posit new ones. In an uncertain, broken world, the sculptures become totems of resistance against alienating narratives of exclusion and division.

Melike Kara’s work is a constant activation of her Kurdish Alevi heritage and its traditions and history. Shamanism and sacred rites occupy an important place in Kurdish culture, and the artist’s great grandfather was himself a shaman believed to have magical healing faculties. Kara recalls that her grandmother had this magnetic power when she once accompanied her on a trip to her native region: “Everyone wanted to touch her”*.

Kara’s installations are often inspired by Kurdish places of worship, as seen in düzgün baba (2020), a work that evokes a pilgrimage site of the same name in Eastern Turkey dedicated to a shaman who had miraculous powers. The rock in the background is where worshippers lay down their offerings or attach a piece of cloth in the hope that their wishes and prayers be heard. In front of it stands an almost monumental structure of knotted textiles, made out of cloth that the artist inherited from her late grandmother. By enacting a site of worship within an installation, Kara doesn’t just pay tribute to her own Kurdish heritage, but also posits her own search for the sacred within the present, as integral to her artistic practice.

In her most recent series of paintings, Kara uses Kurdish tapestry patterns as the starting point of her compositions. Each painting references a specific motif from a region which is alluded to in the title of the work. The compositions are achieved through a heavy build up of painted layers that emerge in and out of the surface. They evoke the intricate weaving of tapestries while eluding representation, lying ambiguously between figuration and abstraction. Like her installations, Kara’s paintings foreground traditions in order to create new narratives. The artworks can be seen as what Glissant describes the totems of the present: objects that we invest with spirituality to guide us through the world.