Julia Barbosa Landois: Frozen in the Permanent Memorial
December 4, 2015 – January 9, 2016
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition’s title, Frozen in the Permanent Memorial, is a reference to Freud's flawed yet poetically described theory of fetish development. Here it relates to a particular phenomenon in Catholic culture in which ritualized reverence is transferred to the materials of worship—purple velvet, polished marble, the smell of warm wax— to the point that the mere presence of these signifiers invoke a visceral reaction. Exclusion or misinterpretation of the lived experience of women in Freud’s writings and Catholic doctrine are rampant, and both fetishize body parts to the point of dismemberment. A kindred artistic sensibility is found in Jean Genet’s novel Our Lady of the Flowers in which communion—receiving the body of another into one’s own—is simultaneously described in the holiest and raunchiest of contexts. This subtext, an unending oscillation between the abject and the exalted, drives both the sculptural and video works in the exhibition.
The near naked body of a deity can do all kinds of things besides suffer, and a virginal vessel can burst with the bloody wet mess of sex, menstruation, miscarriage, abortion and childbirth.
JULIA BARBOSA LANDOIS
Curated by Hills Snyder
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Julia Barbosa Landois is a performance, installation and video artist based in San Antonio, TX. Barbosa Landois’ work uses pop cultural tropes and dark humor to address such thorny subjects as religion, gender and sexuality. Singing is often an important part of her live and recorded performances. Popular song structures are rearranged and re-contextualized to narrate experiences like pregnancy, sex work or border issues. Accompanying objects are found or fabricated to provoke a seductive discomfort: lean in, recoil, repeat. Her work has been featured in galleries, museums and performance festivals throughout the United States, as well as Latin America and Europe. Awards include an Artpace Travel Grant, an Artist Foundation of San Antonio Media Arts Grant and residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute and Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder in Trondheim, Norway. In 2016, Landois will be an artist-in-residence at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien as a recipient of Blue Star Contemporary’s Berlin Residency Program.
Image: Don't Explain (2015); video; running time 3:20