Nina Johnson is pleased to announce Residual Energies, a curatorial debut for esteemed writer, Camille Okhio, including works by Lotte Andersen, Joy Bonfield-Colombara, F Taylor Colantonio, Sarah Jean Culbreth, Ficus Interfaith, Dozie Kanu, Anne Low, Eric N. Mack, Isabella Norris, Ope Omojola (Octave Jewelry), Valentina Cameranesi Sgroi, Sarah Smith (Stockpile Studio), and Olivia Vigo.
“Time travel is not an impossibility. Time is not linear, nor is emotion, intention, communication. Our edges blur every time we consider a moment other than the one we are in now. And the more we consider, the more malleable and adaptable we become. When Joan of Arc donned her armor it brought with it the fortitude that martyrdom requires, protecting not just her body, but her resolve. Her relics and remains were not of the body, as she was burned, but were objects from her life – her garments, her tools. They imparted her followers with a small whisper of the vitality she embodied in life.
The mind can go back as it moves forward. Our energies can transfer to another person, our intentions bringing about effects without physical intervention. Every human who has, does, or will exist partakes in energetic transference. To consciously wield this power a simultaneous opening of the spirit, mind, and heart are required. We can protect or destroy with a thought, a single word, a single gesture.
We leave our mark on the instruments we choose to use. And they leave their marks on us. Like a web of relics, parts of us break off – our essence adhering to the nearest receptacle. In Residual Energies varied intentions, media, and charges gather to form a feedback loop of the soul, works of art and craft insisting on being recognized individually and in relation to one another. Each work throbs with the creative force of it’s maker highlighting the possibility of energetic transference between the animate and inanimate.
Through weaving with the same tools and in the same formats as her 18th and 19th century predecessors Anne Low moves both backward and forward in time, understanding domestic and craft traditions through muscle memory. Similarly, dress historian Sarah Jean Culbreth bridges to past lives, movements, and priorities by making and wearing the uniforms of long dead women in the same way they were made and worn in centuries past. Taylor Colantonio extrapolates on the godly, melding myth and futurity, boiling down existence into a single glance via cartapesta. And on the other end of material spectrum is Ficus Interfaith, whose terrazzo practice itself is a project in partnership with an ever present levity. Joy Bonfield-Colombara equalizes invention and fact, utilizing the religious fervor of ancient polytheism, claiming it as architecturally and emotionally relevant today.
Dozie Kanu’s lyrical assemblages abstract experience and identity, allowing for a memory or landlocked tradition to burst into a second, third, or fourth dimension. His formal choices obscure and complicate cultural touch points, creating tension and dispersing it in one fell swoop. Ope Omojola venerates the detritus of millennia and it’s convergence with the machine made. Lotte Andersen and Isabella Norris’s respective practices both explode material constraints complicating the aesthetics of pop, presenting them as purely personal. With her books Sarah Smith of Stockpile Studio encases thought and intention in protective and pleasurable shells, while Valentina Cameranesi makes vessels into offerings themselves.
Olivia Vigo manipulates the multi-functional, prioritizing form often over use, while somehow maintaining the sanctity of both. enveloping, encasing, protecting, and promoting beauty as the most vital, real thing in human life. And that is what we are after, afterall, the real – the feeling of being alive, aware, connected and untethered, full of possibility, potency, and residual energies” – C.O.
As Camille Okhio’s first curatorial exercise, this exhibition was perceived as equal parts experiment and statement of the value of things, specifically in relation to human intention, care, and attention.
About Camille Okhio
Camille Okhio is a New York–based writer and historian, and the Senior Design Writer at Elle Décor. Her work has also appeared in Apartamento, W Magazine, Architectural Digest, The New York Times, Art in America, Wallpaper*, PIN–UP, and Vogue. Her practice centers on fine and decorative arts and their narrative potential.
