Solo exhibition by Isabella Catenaro
October 16 - 24, 2020
16 Merivale St, South Brisbane QLD 4101 (Boxcopy)
From the dew of heaven features a Eucharistic performance and installation that embodies the profane as sacramental: conflating the abject-queer- uncanny impiety of the artist’s body with the purity of Christ.
Like a mirror to the artist and their maternal figures, From the dew of heaven forms a nourishing and empty microcosm that reflects the queer AFAB body. The subject inaugurates a narrative where masculinity and femininity are intertwined: transgressing and transcending the traditional gender-essentialist axis.
Fruit of the vine is a network of suspended hand-crocheted doilies and a positive pregnancy test within a glass that rests beneath a suspended circular ring. In the ritualistic performance Birthright, anointing and binding the body signifies the act of communion in the Last Supper and Jacob’s deceit in Genesis 27. From the dew of heaven expresses state-changes that straddle between constriction and catharsis, inculcation and indulgence, imprisonment and abundance.
Isabella Catenaro is an emerging artist, based in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia. Through sensorial depictions of their body as a site of dirt, Catenaro attests to the fallibility of demarcated orders. Catenaro installs abject remembrances, interactive edible sculptures, needlework and digital media to contaminate the physical and digital space.