WHO'S AFRAID OF MAGIC?

Incorporating multiple video projections and works on paper in a wall-to-wall painted landscape, Who's Afraid of Magic? addresses extensive “witch” persecutions over a three hundred year period in Europe, drawing ties between these cruelties and the rise of early capitalism. Working from Silvia Federici's text Caliban and The Witch, this multi-media installation questions notions of power as it relates to intelligence and bodies, fictions and realities, and the perceived threat of both imagination and magic. Video works include a ritual sacrifice of a human maypole and intimate, playful storytelling within a diorama of brightly colored small sculptures. DIY pop aesthetic mixes with painted images of medieval torture devices, asking us to connect the dots between historic and contemporary treatments of “other” and things we do not understand. Who's Afraid of Magic? was a solo exhibition with ICA Baltimore.