Lavender, Hibernation and Neon
Mia Isabel Edelgart, Yoojin Lee, Matilda Tjäder, Silke Weißbach and Yui Yamamoto
Curated by Yueh-Ning Lee
"How did you sleep last night?" is a common question that our friends and family ask out of concern for our well-being. However, how most people reply indicates a fact: since the development of modernity, the human body has been seen as the thermodynamic machine1 and the value of sleep has been surpassed by the production of energy, leading to irreversible inclines to shorter duration of rest. In light of the ongoing transition to a post-pandemic era, where everything is speeding up again after a period of slowing down, Lavender, Hibernation and Neon as its title, picturing a heartfelt longing to fall asleep in the insomniac night while our circadian rhythms are disturbed by artificial lights, sounds and clock time.
Lavender, Hibernation and Neon features the reenacted and commissioned new iteration of works made before and during the pandemic by five female artists: Mia Isabel Edelgart, Yoojin Lee, Matilda Tjäder, Silke Weißbach and Yui Yamamoto. Through the lens, voices and bodies of the artists, the exhibition investigates the different sleep states and experiences of time by taking vulnerability, and fatigue as the starting point. Sleep and dream become the first line reflecting artists’ anxiety, fear, and uncertainty in life and work, specifically during the pandemic when the perception of time and emotions were significantly amplified. The duration of each work incorporates the experiences of exhausted bodies and prompts an interruption against the toxic social environment, spectatorship, and the pressures of productivity prevail in a re-accelerating world, as well as emancipates the transformational power of dream.
In this context of post-pandemic, this exhibition aims to, in a way, respond to Judith Butler's insight that “vulnerability is not exactly overcome by resistance, but becomes a potentially effective mobilising force in political mobilizations.” 2 This signifies that the vulnerable sleeping body, which is always considered to be unarmed to the danger of the world, can act as a resistance to acceleration, gaining strength in long periods of inactivity and in the dilation of time in dreams. Based on the video performance My Strange Wish To Be A Worm (2020), Yui Yamamoto’s experimental durational performance Welcome to my Restless Night (2024) triggers the hypnagogia status of the artist. Threaded with uncertainty, anger, and anxiety, the performance reveals the toxic environment with hazardous sleeping situations spawning ambiguity and ambivalence between vulnerability and resistance, sleep and wakefulness in the exhibition space. Raising questions such as “How do you sleep?” and “Do you remember your dream?,”Mia Isabel Edelgart’s video Sov (2021) blends night surveillance footage of a sheep farm, the interviews and collages of sleeping women and children paintings in history. This video delves into spectatorship and social factors that give rise to the sleep crisis. Silke Weißbach’s video installation Opacity appears precisely when darkness is made explicit (2020) wanders between the realm of reality and imagination through the sensation of various lights, from the sunlight to artificial lights. The illusory sleepless world transmits the embodiment of the female body into lights while permeating white noises into the private space.
The Crypt Gallery, located in the St Pancras Church, contributes another layer of narratives in the discussion of sleep/dream and the circulation of regeneration. As the continuation of the album Clones (2022), world-building a symbiosis between memories and fictions in a never-ending dream, this time, in conversation with the site-characteristic of the Crypt Gallery and literary works, Matilda Tjäder’s site-specific performance and installations The Nightmare and the Ghost of a Flea (2024) creates an imaginary scene of a call centre. She processes the phone calls for the restless lonely sleepers in the nightmares in reflection on the power of dreamscapes. On the other hand, the question “Is time innocent?” lingers around Yoojin Lee's performative reading and sound installation Low Time together with To sleep in a world without lullaby (Znamya) (2018) and the reenactment of Introduction (HOVERBED), specifically expands outside the gallery. The gestures of inactivity and the deformed clock sounds in the works challenge the universal mindset of body machines and standardised time.
At this juncture, through the activation of these time-based media works, Lavender, Hibernation and Neon calls out the exhaustion in the personal experiences of sleep, mirroring the universal issues of rest and productivity in canon of tireless Capitalism.
To say, sleep is no longer innocent.
1. Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992): 46.
2. Judith Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance,” in Vulnerability in Resistance, ed. Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay (Duke University Press, 2016), 14, DOI: https://doi org.gold.idm.oclc.org/10.1215/9780822373490-002.
Participating Artists
Friday 05 April 2024 (RSVP)
6.30pm－9pm: Welcome to My Restless Night by Yui Yamamoto
7pm: Low Time by Yoojin Lee
Saturday 06 April 2024 (RSVP)
7pm: The Nightmare and the Ghost of a Flea by Matilda Tjäder
Sunday 07 April 2024 (RSVP)
2pm－4pm: Welcome to My Restless Night by Yui Yamamoto
Private View: 6－9pm, 05 April 2024
Open time:
Sat 06 April: 12－8pm
Sun 07 April: 12－6pm
Mon 08 April: 12－6pm
The Crypt Gallery, Dukes Road Entrance (off Euston Road), London, NW1 2BA
About the Curator, Yueh-Ning Lee
Yueh-Ning Lee is a London-based Taiwanese curator with years of project management experience in art festivals and arts in the public sphere. Her curatorial research currently focuses on slowness, duration and the power of vulnerability concerning ecology and technology in the Post-Capitalism era. Her practice emphasises collaboration across disciplines, from time-based media, performance to digital curation with storytelling at its core.
Upcoming exhibitions include: ‘Lavender, Hibernation and Neon,’ The Crypt Gallery, London, UK (2024); ‘Welcome to my Crib’, GUTS Projects, London, UK (2024). Recent projects include ‘Those Who Dream, Dine’ Upper Ankyle, London, UK (2023); ‘With(out) Language: In conversation with Karin Keisu and Josse Thuresson,’ Art/Work Association, Auto Italia, London, UK (2023); ‘(...) Forgot to Remember to Forget (...)’, Gerald Moore Gallery, London, UK (2022); ‘Prelude to Space’,Stokey Popup, London, UK (2022); ‘Play/Pause’, Chisenhale Studios, London, UK (2022); ‘OOO’, Hackney Showroom, London, UK (2022).