Earth Monsters, an exhibition for International Women's Day

This International Women's Day, nine female presenting Sarabande artists – past and present – explore their take on Mother Earth with Earth Monsters.

Earth Monsters creates a landscape where the relationship between gender and nature is explored. The exhibition deviates from the idea of the Mother Earth and presents new ways to think about the body in relation to nature by drawing attention to concepts of fertility, family, body autonomy, tradition, the female body and post-human. Physical or imagined, natural or fabricated, all artists in this show use nature to challenge our relationship with gender.

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About the artists:

1. Darcey Fleming

Darcey Fleming is a multidisciplinary artist who, through the traditional technique of weaving, twists and transforms discarded baling twine into crazy colourful things. The monumental installations here reference the ambiguity and elusive qualities of nature. Fleming doesn’t want to impose too much meaning onto the work, but rather wants people to take from the work what they take.

2. Shannon Bono

Shannon Bono’s paintings embody an afrofemcentrist consciousness, sharing muted narratives and projecting the black women’s lived experience through her own lens. In these paintings, Bono plays with themes of inner emotions, spirituality and magic to bridge the gap between the physical and the spiritual world. Bono layers self-portraiture with references to anatomical biology and African textile culture to represent the Black female body.

3. Lulu Wang

Lulu Wang is an interdisciplinary artist. Enriching her interests in posthumanism and research in Wabi-Sabi, Wang's practice employs visual language, technology and the organic body to articulate the symbiotic connections between intangibles and their physical embodiment - embracing and celebrating the imperfection within humanity as an ever-evolving process embedded in life and relationships.

4. Kasia Wozniak

Kasia Wozniak is a photographer whose artistic exploration revolves around the themes of memory and time. Through the use of the wet plate collodion technique, she delves into the tangible nature of photographs and challenges contemporary perspectives on viewing them. The Cosmic Egg is a series of new photographs on plates exploring the alchemy and mysticism surrounding the egg, an enduring symbol of creation across diverse cultures. Borrowing from the philosophy of non-duality, Wozniak’s photographs reference the cyclical nature of birth, death, and rebirth.

5. Almudena Romero

Almudena Romero uses photography to explore ways of representing, seeing and understanding. Romero’s works focus on how perception affects existence and how art shapes perception. For this exhibition, Romero has created a new piece of work from her Family Album series depicting her best friend from childhood Leticia, who died in November 2023 as a victim of domestic violence. With this artwork, Romero celebrates the life of her friend and brings attention to violence against women as a quiet but omnipresent reality affecting 1 in 3 women in the world (World Health Organisation, 2018).

6. Paloma Tendero

On Mutability Sequence explores how sequences of DNA can reveal a wealth of genetic information, helping in the identification of genes that encode proteins, regulatory instructions that govern gene expression, and mutations that can lead to disease. This project investigates the implications of genetic inheritance and fertility, sparking discussions about the challenges of creating new life in today's complex world. She balances internal and external factors by using papier-mâché eggs made from recycled egg cartons.

7. Jo Grogan

A Woman’s Work pays tribute to working class hand skills, generational craftsmanship, and addresses the complexities of the historical and present work of women. Drawing from Grinling Gibbon’s lace wood carvings and the history of Irish Lace during the potato famine, the artwork honours the resilience and creativity amongst the women who produced lace for sustenance. Inspired by lace curtains and traditional handcrafted techniques practiced by her nan, Lily, this piece explores the cross pollination of skills by rendering textile into wooden sculptural forms.

8. Kuniko Maeda

Kuniko Maeda’s practice is rooted in material processes, with a strong influence in design aesthetics informed by organic forms and everyday materials. She focuses on the idea of life cycles in Japanese culture and religion with further influences from western models of explorations of materiality. By exploring the possibility of materials and their unique properties, she allows the materials to speak and embrace natural formed abstraction. These sculptures’ organic forms enable them to be adaptable and respond to their environment.

9. Saelia Aparicio

Saelia Aparicio’s work dwells on ideas of extended ethics: How we are intrinsically related with our immediate surroundings, from the bacteria living in our skins and everything we touch, to the particles we breathe, what we eat, how we clean. She is interested in the hybrid as an intersectional being that can live in different realms at the same time, though not fully belonging to any of them. Instead of categorising everything through language, Aparicio bridges between oxymorons by offering a window to a world inhabited by joyful monsters, obsolete gods, invasive species and beautiful debris.

Curated by Shirin Fathi

Shirin Fathi is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator. Her practice focuses on cultural changes in relation to gender identity. Through role-play and the use of cosmetics, masks, and prosthetics, she uses her body as a subject to stage ambiguous and often marginalised identities. Her current project examines gender representation in relation to the contemporary culture and beauty ideals imposed on Iranian women through cosmetic surgery. She is currently showing her work at the Wellcome Collection as part of The Cult of Beauty exhibition. 

 

6 - 13TH MARCH

 

Please note that these events are being filmed and photographed for internal and commercial purposes.

Sarabande events are non-refundable and credits from your ticket purchase will be transferred to an event of your choice.

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Please also see our fire evacuation route here, which attendees will be expected to follow in the event of a fire.