To revive a blind individual’s sight, the Holy Scriptures advisable spitting on eyes. Though divine energy was required to carry out this act, oral fluids got here to be thought of a healing medium, each in a symbolic and literal sense. Historical Arab physicians and mediaeval sages reported that saliva, usually combined with mercury or mud, had therapeutic powers so nice that they may save plague victims. At the moment, Biomedicine acknowledges this fluid as a “window of the state of the physique” for its diagnostic potential. Spit can also be a playful software to query social taboos and ingrained guidelines about what’s repulsive or animalistic. Creator and activist Jean Genet narrated its irresistible erotic powers with regard to his lover: 

“A big a part of his energy over me [ . . . ] lay within the spittle he handed from one cheek to the opposite and which he would typically draw out in entrance of his mouth like a veil. “However the place does he get that spit,” I might ask myself, “the place does he deliver it up from?” Mine won’t ever have the unctuousness or coloration of his. It is going to merely be spun glassware, clear and fragile.”
—The Thief’s Journal, 1949

Spitting, in fact, has additionally come to embody expressions of violence and disdain. When Oscar Wilde was sentenced to arduous labour for “gross indecency with males” and compelled to face, handcuffed, in Clapham Junction to be spat at and abused by the group round him, he was so damage that—as he wrote in an 1897 letter to his associate Lord Alfred Douglas, later printed in De Profundis—he wept each day for a yr after the occasion.

In June 2024, Tarek Lakhrissi was spat on and verbally attacked throughout Delight in Paris for carrying Palestinian and Algerian flags. One thing was disgusting about him being each Arab and queer and supportive of Palestine, in line with the aggressors. It feels ironic that ten years in the past, Tarek shared a put up on Tumblr with the phrase “spit” written on repeat. I take advantage of the phrase ironic deliberately, as Tarek tells me in regards to the occasion with a touch of humour, which is typical in his work. Though having been the goal of an unjust assault, he had the assist of the opposite folks marching: their our bodies and sweat shifting round him as a formless but protecting protect. 

Contemplating the group as a productive area for poetic creation and embodied pondering, the exhibition “SPIT” takes inspiration from the bodily act of ejecting liquid from one’s mouth, and from the erotic and aggressive dimensions of this act.

Enjoying on the intersection between need and disgust, Tarek appears to be like at liquid exchanges between our bodies to discover concepts of violence and subversion, safety and neighborhood. 

The exhibition takes as its place to begin the determine of the satan, presenting reinterpretations of it in a largescale sculpture, alongside a brand new collection of drawings and glass sculptures. Whereas deriving from present our bodies of labor, the present marks a shift in Tarek’s apply: a transfer towards a extra bodily and materials strategy, in addition to an intuitive course of that favours hand-made productions. For instance, Tarek makes use of drawing—which he defines as “an on a regular basis pleasure—as a type of private re-writing, to regain autonomy and course of feelings at their rawest stage, in addition to to open up an area for experimentation and new relationships with written and visible language. 

In a brand new collection of works on paper, the alien and superhero-like characters, with their horns and tails (but additionally human look), show painful but liberating transformations. Black strains of various types and densities recall the minimalist gestures of Etel Adnan, who turned to charcoal within the final yr of her life to reconnect along with her roots and attain a basic type. In the meantime, the angel-like, darkhaired determine in one of many drawings jogs my memory of the flying characters in Religion Ringgold’s quilt Tar Seaside 2. Younger women float among the many stars on a sizzling summer season night time, turning into heroic explorers who overcome obstacles.

By combining goals and fantasies with references to popular culture and sexual histories, Tarek places a queer spin on the traditions of sculpture, drawing, and storytelling. This twist can also be seen within the sculpture THAT EVIL PART INSIDE OF ME IS LAUGHING, realized for his solo exhibition BLISS at Migros Museum, Zurich (2024). The big head of a satan—normally a creature of male semblances however which seems right here with diva-like eyelashes—references Pokemon characters and purple satan emojis. Tarek samples and remixes recognizable traces used to speak playfulness and need to confuse the same old look of characters, particularly those related to evil, creating hybrids that elude canonical types. 

The distinction of supplies and their elemental symbolism performs a vital function all through the present. The delicate clear glass lays near the sturdy automotive paint of the satan sculpture; obscure charcoal subsequent to the shiny resin.

at NıCOLETTı, London
till November 2, 2024