...writing
The Animal Husband, 2024
Vampires in Space, 2022
Walking into Candace Lin’s The Animal Husband is like walking into a fever dream. The balcony is lit like a red-light district; a single collar hangs in the air below; a monstrous ceramic form (Piss Protection Demon) guards the exhibition’s entrance. The exhibition centres around its namesake, which is a video projected onto a rotating screen. Narrated by the artist’s cat, the subject matter evolves from colonialism to bestiality to animal husbandry, and ends with him pondering, “Where does the ball juice go?” The Animal Husband, or, the animals, have taken over the Georgian Gallery of Talbot Rice, previously a natural history museum. Its grand and regal airs have been rightly reclaimed, the balcony walls etched with crude words and drawings. These etchings are not labelled or in the guide, which makes it feel as if the cats themselves scratched violently into the walls: “I’M YOURS”, “RUB ME”. They certainly didn’t clear up after themselves; paint shavings lay on the floor under each scratch in protest. Humans are lauded as flesh lumps, but I’m not sure if we’re predator or prey.
Lin makes clear we can be both, referencing Scotland’s history of medical innovation, in The Moon/Inside Out, an Alien-esque (capital A, à la Sigourney Weaver) ceramic gleaming white under a spotlight. Something is most definitely Inside its orifice. I peer through the vagina of this disembodied abdomen, which sits on a plinth pressed with makeup marks from overeager chins and lips looking for a nosy inside. This dissection of the female form, combined with its blatant encouragement of voyeurism, is haunted with histories of violent misogyny, racism and classism for the sake of science. The stop-motion animation flickers inside; its audio rattles around the inside of the womb, grating and tinny. The figures the animation depicts are slapstick, but the way their bodies come apart is not. The audience has become part of the problem, but Lin makes us feel naive for ever thinking we weren’t.
Playful feline musings on castration included, Win builds a world where humanity is not the main character, or, in curator James Clegg’s words, Win “challenges human exceptionalism”. The Animal Husband is weird and wonderful, but still manages to make space for solemnity and reflection on human/animal/body relations.
“Once the imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless.” This quote from Octavia's Brood, a collection of “Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements”, succinctly explains the intrinsic link marginalised identities have with fantasy. Telling stories gives us space to imagine a different world, or offers up identities we can hide ourselves in. Vampires have often been linked with queerness, from the 1872 lesbian vampire Gothic novella Carmilla, to the (cancelled) 2022 lesbian vampire Netflix series First Kill. Vampires in Space builds on this trope, using what the artist Pedro Neves Marques calls “scientific autofiction” to explore “gender identity, non-nuclear families, queer reproduction, and also the role of intimacy and mental health today.”
Vampires in Space is the Official Portuguese Representation for the 59th Venice Biennale. Curated by João Mourão and Luís Silva, it resides in the Palazzo Franchetti, a stunning example of Venetian Gothic architecture. You enter the building and are immediately greeted by a rich interior. Every element has a considered beauty to it. No corner is forgotten. It’s a contrast to the exhibition that awaits, but not a sharp contrast: a contrast that gently wraps itself around the tall domed ceilings and grand wooden rooms, shrouding the interior with the possibility of the future. Between the historical setting and the futuristic exhibition design (made in collaboration with Diogo Passarinho Studio), it is hard to know whether we are viewing the films as voyeurs of the past, or if the characters are peering at us from the future. The exhibition design goes beyond the standard hard bench- for one of the films, there are upholstered curved seats that you lie on, like space age sun loungers. It is a subtle addition, but one that frames the exhibited films adeptly. It also increases the accessibility of the piece, something that lamentably seems to be an afterthought for the presentation of art films.
There are three films, which are 20 minutes, 35 minutes and 20 minutes respectively. They depict a family of vampires with their own individual histories and dreams, travelling through the stars to an earth-like planet. It is not immediately clear what order you are to watch the films in, but at the end it becomes clear that they are deliberately made so that there is no clear beginning or end, even within each individual film. As with many exhibited art films, there is no way of knowing at what point you have entered, so there is little to do but sit with that lack of knowledge until it becomes clearer. I usually vehemently dislike this about art films- I like to view something in the order it was put together, from beginning to end, and often wish there was a progress bar for all art films. In this case, I ended up appreciating the lack of knowledge. It felt, in a very small way, like it reflected the endlessness of the journey these vampires undertook, venturing into the unknown.
Artreview.com. (2022). Vampires in Space: Pedro Neves Marques on Representing Portugal at the 59th Venice Biennale. [online] Available at: https://artreview.com/vampires-in-space-pedro-neves-marques-on-representing-portugal-at-the-59th-venice-biennale/ [Accessed 8 Dec. 2022].
Bachy, R. (2021). The Queer Corner | Surprise! Vampires have always been gay - The Pitt News. [online] The Pitt News. Available at: https://pittnews.com/article/166607/blogs/the-queer-corner-surprise-vampires-have-always-been-gay/ [Accessed 8 Dec. 2022].
brown, A.M. and Imarisha, W. eds., (2015). Octavia’s Brood. AK Press and Institute for Anarchist Studies, p.4.
Dumbo Design Studio (2022). Pedro Neves Marques - Vampires in Space. [online] Vimeo. Available at: https://vimeo.com/715643860 [Accessed 8 Dec. 2022].
Hayes, A.G. (2021). Grace’s Diary: A Dumpster Fire and ‘Dampbusters’. [online] Substack.com. Available at: https://andygracehayes.substack.com/p/a-dumpster-fire-and-dampbusters-915#details [Accessed 12 May 2023].
Later, N. (2022). Out of the coffin and the closet: gay vampires are no longer sub-text, they’re just text. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/out-of-the-coffin-and-the-closet-gay-vampires-are-no-longer-sub-text-theyre-just-text-195011 [Accessed 8 Dec. 2022].
Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine (2022). Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine – Vampires in space. Biennale 2022. [online] Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine. Available at: https://www.les-nouveaux-riches.com/vampires-in-space-biennale-2022/ [Accessed 8 Dec. 2022].
Mourão , J. and Silva, L. (2022). Vampires in Space. [online] Portugal Pavilion. Available at: https://vampiresinspace.pt/eng/#introduction [Accessed 7 Dec. 2022].
Neves Marques, P. (2022). Pedro Neves Marques. [online] Pedronevesmarques.com. Available at: http://www.pedronevesmarques.com/vampiresinspace.html [Accessed 7 Dec. 2022].
Rudari, F. (2022). Field Notes: Federico Rudari on Pedro Neves Marques, ‘Vampires in Space,’ Portuguese Pavilion, 59th Venice Biennale - Announcements - Art & Education. [online] Artandeducation.net. Available at: https://www.artandeducation.net/announcements/504224/field-notes-federico-rudari-on-pedro-neves-marques-vampires-in-space-portuguese-pavilion-59th-venice-biennale [Accessed 8 Dec. 2022].
Wikipedia Contributors (2022). Carmilla. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmilla [Accessed 8 Dec. 2022].