
A dead writer exists in words and language is a type of virus. Information is at once this resistance, and what it resists— its own dead form, communication. Words are microbes, molecules, maggots. A dead writer also exists in the devastated by cancer rotting corpse; in death
A DEAD WRITER EXISTS IN WORDS AND LANGUAGE IS A TYPE OF VIRUS was my first solo exhibition in London, at Arcadia Missa Gallery in 2016 and was an element of my 2017 PhD project, Becoming Object: Positioning a Feminist Art Practice
The exhibition consisted of sculptural elements; three videos; two performances; and a series of prints of spells written for/against the artworld. The exhibition, alongside the novella, Virus, thesises four years of performative and more traditional research – engaging with a range of contemporary artists, institutions, and writing practices to reformulate the possibilities for art criticism and institutional critique within artworlds. This practice-based research offers new possibilities for embodied art criticism.
The objects in the exhibition, including a wall embedded with crystals and impossible 3d models, make manifest some of my propositions for queer objects, while also insistently refusing mastery.