“Lavinia” group exhibition at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles

“Lavinia” by Sydney Acosta, Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, Ann Craven, Chioma Ebinama, Hanna Hur, Paulina Peavy, Paul Thek, at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles, March 30 – May 4, 2024.

“We are all contingent. Resentment is foolish and ungenerous, and even anger is inadequate. I am a fleck of light on the surface of the sea, a glint of light from the evening star. I live in awe. If I never lived at all, yet I am a silent wing on the wind, a bodiless voice in the forest of Albunea. I speak, but all I can say is: Go, go on.

– Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia.

The word is a sound that symbolizes, has significance: though it is not pure information, it is or can function as sign. Insofar as it is a sign it can be replaced by another sign, equally arbitrary, and this sign can be a visual one. – Ursula K. Le Guin, Text, Silence, Performance. There is no looking glass here and I don’t know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us—hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?

– Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea.