Artist: Madison Bycroft
Exhibition title: Je me
Venue: Adelaïde, Marseille, France
Date: August 26 – September 10, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Adelaïde, Marseille
“Je me”, a composition of words that puts two selves alongside each other and/or one after the other. How does the reflexive verb move? It goes out and in. Are both actions simultaneous? Or are they sequential? They move away, loop around and mingle in an-other space, before returning.
The body receives itself that is no longer itself.
For her first solo exhibition in France, Adelaide presents a new body of work by the artist, including drawings, sculpture and video. Collectively, the work attempts to think a space between multiplicity and effacement. What happens to a body that is affected and affecting, that is restless beyond it’s edges? In what ways can a body enact a capacity for incapacity? And what dangers are encountered therein? The artist is interested in radical forms of empathy, accommodation, and hospitality to difference, and the subsequent unfolding of a subject that allows or invites itself to be altered.
Bycroft’s practice currently explores empathic, animist, and linguistic methodologies of translation, where translation might be read as an approach, an attunement, an invocation or a being with.
Of particular interest, is the fine line between closed (reductive) and open (enabling) speech. What practical possibilities can the mystical language of unsaying and the paradox offer? How can the middle voice – a verb form both active and passive – be re-instated in speech and action, in a way that queers the subject, makes it plural, and renegotiates lines of relation?
Bycroft performs different selves, challenging the idea of a unique subject authoring her own actions, and instead situates herself as a responsive multiplicity.
ABOUT ADELAÏDE
Adelaide is an aunt. She barters everyday.
Adelaide is a space of exchange and experimentation.
It is a space where tools and ideas are being shared.
It is a space where conversations happen.
It is a space of activity, labor, traffic, and generosity.
Adelaide is an artist’s run space founded by Wilfrid Almendra and located in the studio he shares with Maxime Davy.
