︎


Notes


1 Exhibition at Vernacular Institute, Mexico City
2 September, 2018

3 Artist
Anna M. Szaflarski

4 Curated by Eva Posas 

5 Special thanks to Jo Ying Peng, Anna M. Szaflarski, Kit Hammonds, Javier Villaseñor and Manuel Becerril

The hills erect their purple heads
~ 


Influenced by popular sciences and micro-biology Anna M. Szaflarski’s graphic narratives implement the supernatural substitution of conventional human behaviours with those of micro- (bacterial, fungal, molecular) life. The behaviours observed in micro-biology are anthropomorphized, collided with narrative canons, pulverizing the foundations of sedimented stories or master narratives. They are then reorganized, re-consumed, retold. The result is psychedelic, surreal, supernatural, feminist science-fiction.

The Hills erect their Purple Heads is the next chapter in a series of graphic, comic book style drawings. Installed on crinoline fabric and accompanied by scraps of collaged text and two ceramic sculptures, the process-developed installation at the Vernacular Institute is used as a brainstorming session for the production of new texts for a book that will bring together graphic works and essays together, centered on stories and essays about the invisible transmission of emotion.

The title of this work is a citation from the first line of an Emily Dickinson poem (1688), which Szaflarski found curiously quoted without justification on two separate occasions. The first by micro biologist, Lynn Margulis in her book on symbiotic evolution, and the second in a text book on geomorphology. Wondering why have these citations been left unexplained, we might assume that the poem could speak to an aspect on mutation and morphology.

The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
Yet Man has not of all the Throng
A Curiosity.