The New Pantheon (2022-)  The New Pantheon features thirteen wall installations, with life-size, monumental portraits of intersex divinities at their heart, and develops an entirely new iconography for each of them, drawing on pagan, Vodou, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim motifs and symbolism. In my project I develop a new concept of the frame, which draws on the classical model of the medieval and Renaissance altarpiece and its elaborate structure of multiple images organized according to an overarching narrative around a central figure, but no longer regards it as a boundary. Instead, it expands and animates the classical frame, as it were, by the inclusion of sculpture, video, animation, hand-painted film strips, and experimental sound. The various media conjure up a pulsating visual and aural surface, in front of which the visitors may fall in a trance and become keenly aware of their otherness. The installations are meant to cast a spell on them and move them at a distance by releasing the powers that lie dormant within them as within any material. To put it otherwise, The New Pantheon is a giant experiment in human telekinesis, or the art of moving objects at a distance with the power of one’s own mind only.

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Materials: oil, egg tempera, and ink on marble, sequin fabric in a wooden frame, reclaimed human afro hair, fire-based clay, and glaze.

 

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