Thea Yabut / VIBRISSA
September 13 – December 1, 2018
L’INCONNUE | 233 Boulevard Crémazie O, Montreal, QC
http://linconnue.biz/
September 13 – December 1, 2018
L’INCONNUE | 233 Boulevard Crémazie O, Montreal, QC
http://linconnue.biz/
Consider:
Whether you’re a human being, an insect, a microbe, or a stone, this verse is
true.
Whether you’re a human being, an insect, a microbe, or a stone, this verse is
true.
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
(Octavia
Butler, The Parable of the Talents)[1]
Butler, The Parable of the Talents)[1]
To begin, I’d like to start from behind, with what is trailing
and tailing. The background – a space that builds and nurtures the conditions
for making something a thing or
form[2]. Normally delegated to the rear, it’s an interiority meant to fade into
invisibility. I want to move from the inside-out. A sound: Whirrrrrrrr. This is the voice of an Osterizer Galaxie; the
household blender was a popular domestic staple of the 70’s and 80’s. Outfitted
with heavy-duty motors, the appliance assisted mostly women in shredding,
beating, and creaming their dreams and duties. This is the object and tool of
our background: the Osterizer Galaxie used by Thea Yabut in her studio, where
ingredients whirr into a slimy soup
before becoming the hardened forms we see in VIBRISSA. Vibrissae are the hairs around an animal’s snout. Sensing
the world around them, these organs of touch create knowledge through physical
contact. Yabut’s equal may be her hands;
she mixes torn bits of paper and old drawings with water, blends and then
strains them. Glue, joint compound, powdered pigments and chalk pastel are
added, blended and strained again. This process produces thick wet blobs of
pulp in hues of alien greys, sandy browns and faded pansy purples. She’s aiming
for a specific consistency in her mush, repeating this process until it is
found. The paste is soggy and cold; it feels regurgitated.
and tailing. The background – a space that builds and nurtures the conditions
for making something a thing or
form[2]. Normally delegated to the rear, it’s an interiority meant to fade into
invisibility. I want to move from the inside-out. A sound: Whirrrrrrrr. This is the voice of an Osterizer Galaxie; the
household blender was a popular domestic staple of the 70’s and 80’s. Outfitted
with heavy-duty motors, the appliance assisted mostly women in shredding,
beating, and creaming their dreams and duties. This is the object and tool of
our background: the Osterizer Galaxie used by Thea Yabut in her studio, where
ingredients whirr into a slimy soup
before becoming the hardened forms we see in VIBRISSA. Vibrissae are the hairs around an animal’s snout. Sensing
the world around them, these organs of touch create knowledge through physical
contact. Yabut’s equal may be her hands;
she mixes torn bits of paper and old drawings with water, blends and then
strains them. Glue, joint compound, powdered pigments and chalk pastel are
added, blended and strained again. This process produces thick wet blobs of
pulp in hues of alien greys, sandy browns and faded pansy purples. She’s aiming
for a specific consistency in her mush, repeating this process until it is
found. The paste is soggy and cold; it feels regurgitated.
We have lived before. We will live again.
We will be silk, stone, mind, star.
We will be scattered, gathered, molded, probed.
We will live, and we will serve life.
My memories of the Osterizer Galaxie are around my mother doing
her best to make a no-bake cheesecake, grinding down graham crackers and
whipping up cream, set in layers and topped with canned blueberries. It was the
only dessert she ever really made, and stood in sharp contrast to the other
culinary treats in our household: kimchi, oxtail soup, seaweed, squid jerky,
dried anchovies, funky fermented soybeans. Her being an immigrant from Seoul,
this simple cake, in hindsight, symbolized her integration into western
domesticity. The exciting, violent sounds of the strong motor desiccating its
contents together still linger in my memory. Yabut pulls a bit of gunk from the
lump, pinching and placing it down on a drying rack constructed from mesh
window screen laid atop a gridded light diffuser. This DIY rack is the skeleton
holding the mush, for now fleshy and soft, soon to become skeletal forms of
their own. The eventual forms emerge from squeezing and sticking small bits of
the goo, one finger-ful at a time. The water drips out of the guck as she lays
it down; her fingers remain imprinted on each pinch. It’s arranged in wormy
lines and blobs, resembling fish skeletons whose vertebrae have become curvy
mazes of knots. These shapes come from Yabut’s intuitive movements in relation
with the material’s necessity to clump in one way more than another in order to
hold form. The forms represent this blurry union of matter and body. Sometimes
these lines congregate around clay nodal ovals, coloured by hand-burnished
graphite that gives a dull mirror-like effect.
Air-dried over several days, the hardened forms resemble auras,
tentacles, lichen, skeletons and whiskers emanating from cloudy nodes. They are
soft scaffolds of mush, for now.
her best to make a no-bake cheesecake, grinding down graham crackers and
whipping up cream, set in layers and topped with canned blueberries. It was the
only dessert she ever really made, and stood in sharp contrast to the other
culinary treats in our household: kimchi, oxtail soup, seaweed, squid jerky,
dried anchovies, funky fermented soybeans. Her being an immigrant from Seoul,
this simple cake, in hindsight, symbolized her integration into western
domesticity. The exciting, violent sounds of the strong motor desiccating its
contents together still linger in my memory. Yabut pulls a bit of gunk from the
lump, pinching and placing it down on a drying rack constructed from mesh
window screen laid atop a gridded light diffuser. This DIY rack is the skeleton
holding the mush, for now fleshy and soft, soon to become skeletal forms of
their own. The eventual forms emerge from squeezing and sticking small bits of
the goo, one finger-ful at a time. The water drips out of the guck as she lays
it down; her fingers remain imprinted on each pinch. It’s arranged in wormy
lines and blobs, resembling fish skeletons whose vertebrae have become curvy
mazes of knots. These shapes come from Yabut’s intuitive movements in relation
with the material’s necessity to clump in one way more than another in order to
hold form. The forms represent this blurry union of matter and body. Sometimes
these lines congregate around clay nodal ovals, coloured by hand-burnished
graphite that gives a dull mirror-like effect.
Air-dried over several days, the hardened forms resemble auras,
tentacles, lichen, skeletons and whiskers emanating from cloudy nodes. They are
soft scaffolds of mush, for now.
Alter the speed or the direction of Change. Vary the scope of
Change.
Change.
Recombine the seeds of Change. Transmute the impact of Change.
Seize Change, Use it. Adapt and grow.
These mysterious figures have everyday materials behind them;
there is familiarity in the foreign. It is through facing the mush behind these forms that I feel and know
them. Yabut’s mush-making entails a significant amount of verbing. In 1967-68, the artist Richard Serra produced
Verb List, an artwork consisting of
84 verbs hand-written onto a sheet of paper. Some of the verbs include: to
roll, to store, to spill, to knot, to repair, to dig, to weave, to cut, to
continue. Using it as a guide for his own practice,[3] he described the list as
a series of “actions to relate to
oneself, material, place, and process”. I’d like to propose that the verbs
enacted in and through work are not necessarily mere actions taken to relate to
oneself through a one-way path, but rather, are potentials that are already
entangled within our own beings. There is no verb to seize, the actions are
inextricably tied in me, and seep out as expressive forms of identification. I
am curious about verbs constituting identity, that what one does with materials might indicate who
they are, albeit in another representation. Verbing as being. Perhaps the
multiplicity of the verbs one inhabits fester along untraceable routes to make
identity. Serra’s verbs gain more depth when thought of as fragments and
stories of a self. Yabut, together with her Osterizer Galaxie, adds a rich set
of terms: to blend, to desiccate, to mush, to liquefy, to pinch, to pull, to
probe, to wet, to burnish, to vibrate, to draw.
there is familiarity in the foreign. It is through facing the mush behind these forms that I feel and know
them. Yabut’s mush-making entails a significant amount of verbing. In 1967-68, the artist Richard Serra produced
Verb List, an artwork consisting of
84 verbs hand-written onto a sheet of paper. Some of the verbs include: to
roll, to store, to spill, to knot, to repair, to dig, to weave, to cut, to
continue. Using it as a guide for his own practice,[3] he described the list as
a series of “actions to relate to
oneself, material, place, and process”. I’d like to propose that the verbs
enacted in and through work are not necessarily mere actions taken to relate to
oneself through a one-way path, but rather, are potentials that are already
entangled within our own beings. There is no verb to seize, the actions are
inextricably tied in me, and seep out as expressive forms of identification. I
am curious about verbs constituting identity, that what one does with materials might indicate who
they are, albeit in another representation. Verbing as being. Perhaps the
multiplicity of the verbs one inhabits fester along untraceable routes to make
identity. Serra’s verbs gain more depth when thought of as fragments and
stories of a self. Yabut, together with her Osterizer Galaxie, adds a rich set
of terms: to blend, to desiccate, to mush, to liquefy, to pinch, to pull, to
probe, to wet, to burnish, to vibrate, to draw.
The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root
among the stars.
among the stars.
It is to live and to thrive on new
earths.
earths.
It is to become new beings, and to
consider new questions.
consider new questions.
It is to leap into the heavens. Again
and again.
and again.
It is to explore the vastness of heaven.
It is to explore the vastness of
ourselves.
ourselves.
Through Yabut’s work, a form of life emerges that feels against
dominant modes of representation, and this life-form is experienced inside my
body, though somehow still foreign to me. An interior-exteriority.[4] Her forms
show me other modes of existence. Titled after terminologies used for the hand,
they describe the puffy part of the palm, or the muscle from which the thumb
radiates from the rest of the hand, for example. Vibrissa is another kind of limb.
Whiskers that feel and know simultaneously; tactile threads to navigate self
and other. Yabut’s work defies a uniform or singular read. Through it, I
imagine new worlds, a body otherwise, or a different kind of skin evolving out
of ours. At the same time it stays with a present moment of stickiness. Paper,
water, glue, pulp, mush. Her own feelers pinching and pulling the matter. It
pushes back in bumpy fingerprint-laden ridges as it is pushed upon. Who’s
absorbing whom? They face us, held up by handmade clay and graphite tacks,
bones in another lifetime. They speak through showing themselves as fragile
exoskeletons, for now.
dominant modes of representation, and this life-form is experienced inside my
body, though somehow still foreign to me. An interior-exteriority.[4] Her forms
show me other modes of existence. Titled after terminologies used for the hand,
they describe the puffy part of the palm, or the muscle from which the thumb
radiates from the rest of the hand, for example. Vibrissa is another kind of limb.
Whiskers that feel and know simultaneously; tactile threads to navigate self
and other. Yabut’s work defies a uniform or singular read. Through it, I
imagine new worlds, a body otherwise, or a different kind of skin evolving out
of ours. At the same time it stays with a present moment of stickiness. Paper,
water, glue, pulp, mush. Her own feelers pinching and pulling the matter. It
pushes back in bumpy fingerprint-laden ridges as it is pushed upon. Who’s
absorbing whom? They face us, held up by handmade clay and graphite tacks,
bones in another lifetime. They speak through showing themselves as fragile
exoskeletons, for now.
-Laurie Kang
[1]Butler, Octavia. The
Parable of the Talents. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2000. Print.
Parable of the Talents. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2000. Print.
This is an excerpt of scripture from Butler’s fictional religion
Earthseed. All following scriptures
are taken from Earthseed passages.
Earthseed. All following scriptures
are taken from Earthseed passages.
[2] Ahmed, Sara. Queer
Phenomenology. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print.
Phenomenology. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print.
[3] Friedman, Samatha. “To Collect.” MoMA. 20 Oct. 2011. Web. 24 Aug. 2018.
[4] Povinelli, Elizabeth. “Routes/Worlds.” e-flux. September 2011. Web. 22 Aug. 2018. 
L’INCONNUE
| 233 Boulevard Crémazie O, Montreal,
QC
| 233 Boulevard Crémazie O, Montreal,
QC