Petra Feriancová & Nicolás Lamas at Tenderpixel

Artists: Petra Feriancová & Nicolás Lamas

Exhibition title: Becoming Animal

Curated by: Borbála Soós

Venue: Tenderpixel, London, UK

Date: May 16 – June 30, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Tenderpixel, London

“…each multiplicity is already composed of heterogeneous terms in symbiosis, and that a multiplicity is continually transforming itself into a string of other multiplicities, according to its thresholds and doors. For example, the Wolf-Man’s pack of wolves also becomes a swarm of bees, and a field of anuses, and a collection of small holes and tiny ulcerations (the theme of contagion): all these heterogeneous elements compose “the” multiplicity of symbiosis and becoming.”(1)

These two interrelated solo exhibition look at our current times as a moment when complex systems and ecologies are more and more vulnerable, and in fact quickly falling apart. They consider instances of accelerated entropy as moments when transformations happen. While the decaying structures bring with them dangers and unpredictability, they also provide many opportunities for other beings to more intensely interact with each other. It is a period when becoming gains importance also as a radical way of caring for each other and surviving in new forms. This is under the understanding that we are all connected, in fact, made of the same. Our bodies are the site of nature in the past present and the future, full of histories of cross-contamination and symbiotic relations. We consist of many different beings for which we continually provide as hosts, moreover transform ourselves into each other. If evolution includes any veritable becomings, it is in the domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales and kingdoms, with no possible filiation…(2). On the far side, we find becoming -elementary, -cellular, -molecular, and even becoming-imperceptible…(3)

Becoming can entail mimicry, taking on certain characteristics or dissolving our boundaries in the desire to be one with, assimilated into the surroundings. Ultimately however, becoming is as much about a way of seeing (point of view) as being seen. Instead of imitating a form of an animal, one has to embody a way of its existence, including speed, capacities, powers and relationality. Becoming is a matter of unlearning physical and emotional habits and learning to take on new ones that enlarge the scope of one’s relationship and responses to the world.(4)

1.) Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.(Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible…), Continuum, London, 2014
2 – 3.) Ibid.
4.) Christoph Cox. Of Humans, Animals and Monsters, In: Animals. Documents of Contemporary Art,Edited by Filipa Ramos, Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2016

Petra Feriancová, Becoming Animal, 2018, exhibition view, Tenderpixel, London

Nicolás Lamas, Becoming Animal, 2018, exhibition view, Tenderpixel, London