Under the Waqwaq Tree
Anna Betbeze, Patricia Domínguez, Katie Dorame, Nilbar Güreş, Michelle Handelman, Sahar Khoury, Cathy Lu, Ranu Mukherjee, Shervone Neckles
Curated by Naz Cuguoğlu
October 16, 2021 through January 22, 2022
@
/
1150 25th st, building b
San Francisco
Review by Suzanne L'Heureux
Under the Waqwaq Tree, curated by Naz Cuguoğlu at Slash (/), San Francisco, is a richly imaginative exhibition that makes space for the marginalized and demonized “others” who have been relegated to the shadows across cultures and time, in mythology, science fiction and reality. The exhibition’s exploration of “ferocious monsters,” “fabulous creatures,” and the “alien other” make it fascinating to consider through the lens of the Jungian concept of the shadow.
According to Jung, throughout our development, as we learn to cultivate the qualities we believe will be accepted by society and to hide those viewed as unacceptable, a polarity arises between the “persona” which we consciously present to the world, and the “shadow,” which contains all of the qualities we repress and that become part of our unconscious; such as vulnerability, aggression, sexual impulses, etc.
(Left) Katie Dorame, Other Side – Barbara as Sea Witch, 2017, oil and acrylic on canvas, 18 x 16 in, (Right) Nilbar Güreş WEBCAM SEX GHOST, 2019, mixed media on fabric, 35 x 29 1/2 in.
In the exhibition, the masked and veiled subjects in Kate Dorame’s paintings, such as Other Side – Barbara as Sea Witch (2017), suggest this duality. Meanwhile, Nilbar Güreş’ Webcam Sex Ghost (2019) calls to mind repressed and hidden aspects of ourselves, such as our sexual proclivities, which are often forced to find expression in the shadows. The mixed media piece depicts an ambiguous figure in a dark room, reclining provocatively, like a contemporary Olympia, legs spread before a laptop camera, while ghostly leering faces look on.
Michelle Handelman, Irma Vep, The Last Breath, 2013-2015, single-channel video, loop, 36 min.
The most intriguing work to consider in the context of the shadow is Michelle Handelman’s Irma Vep, The Last Breath (2013-2015), a 36-minute video which features a lonely vampire based on the character, Irma Vep, from the silent film, Les Vampires (1915). Throughout the film, Irma is seen alternatively crawling around in the shadows, coveting stolen jewels and sucking the blood of one of her victims, as well as lounging on a couch talking with her therapist about this life of crime and murder. There is a sense that she is being consumed by her shadow as Irma speaks of her guilt and shame, feeling suffocated by her tight black cat suit, and describes herself as a “big black void,” her soul like “dark matter.
At one point, the therapist asks, “Do you ever feel lonely?” Irma looks directly at the viewer and firmly replies, “No.” Clearly a lie. There is defiance in her tone, an “aggression” as the therapist notes, which reads as a defense mechanism. The truth is, Irma, played by actress Zachary Drucker, is deeply suffering. Often, we repress into the shadow aspects of ourselves we need to embody in order to live authentically. Irma speaks of the pain of having those parts of ourselves rejected when she says, “Pain is being told you’re good for nothing. You don’t deserve any of the success you’re gonna find in life. Pain is being told you’re not worthy. That nobody is ever going to love you.”
When we come to understand the suffering of the shadow we open up a doorway to having compassion for it. On the other hand, insofar as we can’t accept the shadow as part of who we are, we project it onto the world as an object outside of ourselves to be feared, eradicated and destroyed. Our stance becomes, as Ursula K. Le Guin puts it in her essay, “The Child and the Shadow,” “There’s nothing wrong with me—it’s them. I’m not a monster, other people are monsters.” (64)
The collective tendency to see one’s shadow “out there” in another race, culture, or group, was seen by Jung as the most dangerous aspect of the modern psyche and the basis for all war, violence and oppression. Many works in the exhibition feature subjects who have borne the brunt of humanity’s collective shadow projections. For example, Shervone Neckles’ Terciopelo: Jab Jab Woman (2015) references the colonization and enslavement of the Grenadian people by the Spanish, and Cathy Liu’s American Dream Pillow (Double) (2021), references racism experienced by Asian immigrant women, specifically in US nail salons.
According to Jung, healing and wholeness require becoming consciously aware of and integrating one’s own shadow material, rather than projecting it onto the world as justification for such tyranny. “If an individual wants to live in the real world, he must withdraw his projections; he must admit that the hateful, the evil, exists within himself,” writes Le Guin (64).
Patricia Domínguez, Madre Drone, 2019-2020, 4k video and 3d animation on holographic projector, audio, loop, 20:51 min, sculptures and stone, dimensions variable
Chilean artist, Patricia Dominguez’s Madre Drone (2020) touches on this integrative necessity. Recognizing her own role as a beneficiary of neoliberalism and colonialism, Dominguez seeks to acknowledge the harm of these legacies and to incorporate healing practices and rituals. Her sculptural installation, which takes up an entire corner of the exhibition, consists of an altar-like foundation made of stones, above which a video screen displays footage of uprisings in Chile, rainforests burning, and maimed and killed animals. Floating above the video screen is a holographic projection of a drone with a crying eye (based on indigenous ceramic vases known as jarro pato), simultaneously surveilling and weeping for the land. Hands reach out from the altar in gestures of offering, yet also suggest the buried dead bodies upon which contemporary society is built. The altar is adorned with aloe and roses, both healing plants. Roses were brought to South America by European colonists but have been appropriated in mestizo rituals for healing trauma and are used to evoke that healing by Dominguez.
Anna Betbeze, Eden, 2015, wool, acid dyes, ash, india ink, 94 1/2 x 63 in.
Metaphors for integration can be found in the many hybrid creatures throughout the exhibition: a serpent-woman in the Madre Drone video; a tree-woman in Ranu Mukherjee’s dear future (2020); and in Anna Betzbe’s Eden (2015), a large wool tapestry that looks like the furry pelt of a wild beast, yet is beautifully dyed with shades of pink and yellow, merging sensuality and revulsion.
What is shadow and what is light? This exhibition takes inspiration from the Arab myth of the Waqwaq Tree, upon which female creatures reproduce and endlessly self-perpetuate. Through one lens of projected fear, which casts women as the primal other, this could be seen as a terrifying story; while from another perspective, it is a story of creative autonomy and self-reliance.
Shervone Neckles, you are your best thing, Provenance Series, 2019, Velour Paper, embroidered thread surface, upholstery fabric and fabric trim, 27 1/2 x 37 1/2 x 2 in.
Le Guin writes that to discover wholeness, the ego must turn towards the inner regions of the Self that Jung calls the “collective unconscious.” It is there that we will find “the source of true community; of felt religion; of art, grace, spontaneity and love.” Shervone Neckles’ you are your best thing, Provenance Series (2019) evokes this “collective unconscious” through both the interiority and the interconnectivity it depicts. The work features silhouettes of three women with lines like nerve endings coming out of their heads, while golden lines leading from deep within each of them interconnect in a shimmering subterranean network.
It is up to you whether you will see the subjects of this exhibition as “other,” or recognize them as embodying parts of yourself, a shared humanity, the gateway to source and true community. To get there, Le Guin writes, “the first step is to turn around and follow your own shadow.” In other words, we start by becoming consciously aware of the shadow and recognizing its existence within us. Under the Waqwaq Tree invites us to do just that.
Under the Waqwaq Tree is open at Slash (/) through January 22nd.
Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Child and the Shadow,” Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1979.
Robert Johnson, “Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche”, Harper Collins, 2009.