Chloé Elizabeth Maratta & Flannery Silva at SCHLOSS

Artists: Chloé Elizabeth Maratta, Flannery Silva

Exhibition title: Electronic Tiger Lilly

Venue: SCHLOSS, Oslo, Norway

Date: May 26 – June 24 , 2017

Photography: Courtesy of the artist and SCHLOSS, Oslo. Photos: Vegard Kleven

SCHLOSS is pleased to present “Electronic Tiger Lilly”, an exhibition by Chloé Elizabeth Maratta & Flannery Silva.

Girlhood is unsound. I’m talking about the psychosocial category, not the fleshy thing. More impor-tantly, it’s unexclusive. Girlhood is not a club. There are no members or non-members, but people getting by due to their capacity for friendship.

Girlhood is under siege by ceaseless streams of words and images exceptionally persuasive in nature. Some girls are immediate and enthusiastic in their surrender. Some sublimate their situation by means of sarcastic subordination. Some obsessively examine the words and images, wringing and peeling them. Some are very perceptive, becoming eerily detailed in their girl-portrayal.

Girlhood garb is complicated, signaling contradictory things. Girls collect their treasures with intent. They’ve been taught that they are treasures themselves, and that exclusivity and rarity correlate strongly with value. They shark around supermarkets, corner shops and thrift stores, gathering trinkets and talismans to wear as armor.

Girlhood derails discourse. That’s the accusation, anyways. Girls bring intimacy into every space and situation they enter, exhausting their peers with whiny voices and faking nail polish. Some people truly loathe informality. They see unpresented, shapeless figures, feeting and floating like liquids; secretive, Kristeva-reading, naysaying fucking harpies. Girls are well aware of these attitudes.

Girlhood parlance is hyperreal. Its origin is nowhere precisely, still it’s highly particular. Girls are experts at willful misinterpretation. Less is more? Do nothing. Makeup fatters? Cake it on. Timid’s twee? Play dead. It’s almost too easy. But girls like to have a little fun with the senseless noise they’re asked to consider. Because cloying slickness is exactly that.

-Nora Joung