Gasworks London

GASWORKS | 155 Vauxhall Street
SE11 5RH London

plan route show map
gasworks.org.uk +44 (0) 20 7735 3445

artists & participants

Peggy Ahwesh,  Teresa Burga,  Wilson Diaz,  Nilbar Güres,  William E. Jones,  Candice Lin,  Priscilla Monge,  Solange Pessoa,  Emilia Prieto Tugores,  Patrick Staff,  Cecilia Vicuna,  Osias Yanov 

curators

Robert Leckie , Miguel A. Lopez 

press release

"Why did they give me a kingdom to rule over if there is no better kingdom than this hour in which I exist between what I was not and will not be?" –Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, as read aloud in Peggy Ahwesh's video She Puppet (2001)

A Kingdom of Hours explores how artists disrupt sequential time—from biological rhythms to historical chronologies—to undermine rigid structures of belonging. Videos, woodcuts and sculptures by William E Jones, Emilia Prieto Tugores an Osías Yanov disentangle queer or feminist affects from their present tense through strategies of repetition, fragmentation and anachronism, while videos and works on paper by Peggy Ahwesh, Teresa Burga and Wilson Díaz reflect on how human life cycles are socially conditioned. Presented alongside sculptures, paintings and textile pieces by Nilbar Güreş, Priscilla Monge, Cecilia Vicuña and Candice Lin and Patrick Staff that explore gendered forms of cultural assimilation and societal expectation, these works emphasise material and symbolic experiences of plasticity, fluidity and mutability. Together they compose rhythms of empathy and desire that question how subjectivities are constrained by periodisation, patriarchy and capitalism.

A Kingdom of Hours is indebted to queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman's writings on "chrononormativity"—a process of standardisation through which societies' rhythms are internalised by their constituents like city smog—and "erotohistoriography," or a deeply affective approach to history rooted in desire. The exhibition brings together artists from different generations and cultural backgrounds to consider the biopolitical implications of these terms and "chronodissident" strategies and forms.

Curated by Robert Leckie (Curator, Gasworks) and Miguel A. López (Chief Curator, TEOR/éTica), this exhibition is part of an institutional collaboration between Gasworks and TEOR/éTica, where a revised version of the exhibition will open on October 19, 2016.

Gasworks' 2016 Exhibitions Programme is supported by Catherine Petitgas.