Seashell Aesthetics is an exhibition building upon a 2017 essay of the same name by Martabel Wasserman published in Yes Femmes. It explores catastrophes posed by carbon, plastic, oil and other byproducts of capitalism polluting the ocean. The shell becomes a way to think with a material that eventually decomposes into fossil fuel. It is both about materiality and possibilities for metaphor. The photographic work by Wasserman that frames the exhibition explores connections between the structural challenges we face (housing, scare work opportunities, high cost of living) with those facing the shelled sea critters at the who share our coast. Seashell Aesthetics takes as its subjects “bottom feeders” or smaller creatures who are less often evoked as spokes creatures in mainstream climate change discourse. The work seeks to create connections between the disintegration of shells caused by ocean acidification and desire for security and structure as the public sphere is attacked. Camp becomes the aesthetic approach, in an attempt to mobilize humor and melancholy simultaneously as a call for increased interspecies solidarity. While Susan Sontag wrote “nothing in nature can be campy,” the work is this show insists upon camp as a strategy to look at the ways in which nature and culture co-constitute each other.

Joshua Thomen will be showing (If I knew how to cry) (2018) which explores his existence that lays between two poles: one where his queer brown body is systemically erased and the reality where his body is hypervisible and easily identifiable. The form shape shifts between an everyday baseball hat (à la Claes Oldenburg) to biological bodily symbols of a protective shell. Joshua Thomen uses softness as a radical idea to push against hegemonic masculinity and speak to labor of the subaltern. He is featured with his oceanic soft sculptural work in Wasserman’s photographs. Additionally, they will be collaborating on soft sculptures of kelp, a crucial element of coastal health. A collaborative sculptural centerpiece by Dulce Ibarra Soledad, Thomen and Wasserman inspired by Botticelli’s Birth of Venus will visually ask how love can be reborn to respond to the multiplying crises of the anthropocene. Viewers can stand on a reinterpreted half shell and channel their desires for a flourishing future beyond sustaining the status quo.

The exhibition will feature sculptural installation and a night of performances, Nature Camp, on November 25, in conversation with the idea of seashell aesthetics. Michelle Antonisse and Edgar Fabián Frías, two of the curators/ performers of Nature Camp will have corresponding installations in the show. Additionally, in the upstairs gallery Sarah Zucker will be presenting Neon Womb, an immersive and healing experience.

open gallery hours are as follows:

Thurs 11/15: 2-7pm
Fri 11/16: 2-7pm
Sun 11/18: 12-4pm
Weds 11/21: 2-7pm
Fri 11/23: 2-7pm
Sat 11/24: 12-6pm
Sun 11/25: 4-9 performance and reception

Additional hours can be arranged by appointment