Left: Being Black Hole (2024); right: Like a Tongue Knows the Mouth (2024).
"Black Hole Family" is the result of two artists working separately then converging around the concept of a black hole. Laura Ohio uses video and performance to consider the failure of vision and the overdetermined image of a young girl. Jungsub Eom is interested in the chain of thoughts triggered by reorienting oneself to the ungraspable concept of a black hole, which he makes tangible and embodied through his fabrication process.
As friends who are facing fractures and new beginnings in their family lives, they became drawn to the idea of the black hole. The family acts as a black hole because of its infinite density. We are shaped internally by the intense familiarity–or distance–of family, which remains a part of us regardless of our intentions. There is also the density of family as an institution, the most basic unit, norm, and governance of society. Like a black hole that sucks everything in, the family is always gestating an inevitable absence or incomprehensible loss. Black Hole Family is also about relationships with others that are mediated by pain.
Prior to the exhibition, the two artists were in residence at Automata Los Angeles, responding to the space, performing, reading, and translating oral structures into different forms.
As friends who are facing fractures and new beginnings in their family lives, they became drawn to the idea of the black hole. The family acts as a black hole because of its infinite density. We are shaped internally by the intense familiarity–or distance–of family, which remains a part of us regardless of our intentions. There is also the density of family as an institution, the most basic unit, norm, and governance of society. Like a black hole that sucks everything in, the family is always gestating an inevitable absence or incomprehensible loss. Black Hole Family is also about relationships with others that are mediated by pain.
Prior to the exhibition, the two artists were in residence at Automata Los Angeles, responding to the space, performing, reading, and translating oral structures into different forms.
From left to right: Barbara's Wedding Dress (2024); found object from Automata; Chest (2024); One Hundred Years (2024).
Being Black Hole (2024)
Left: Gone (2024); right: California Impression (2022).
Remainder (2024).
I CRAWLED BACK ONTO SHORE AND I WAILED AND I WAILED AND I WAILED, AND IN MY EYES I SAW LOVE AND TERROR REFLECTED BACK AT ME, FOR HOME IS WHEREVER YOU RETURN TO, FOR LIFE IS ALWAYS ALSO DEATH (2024). Performance featuring Barbara T. Smith.