Symbolism & The Aesthetic Resistance Between Art & Ritual

About

This exhibition is curated by Rowynn Dumont, and features artist Xayvier Haughton. 

In the work presented, Haughton creates a symbolic bridge between aesthetics, artistic values, and the activating process of practice that ritualizes the experienced event between audience and artist. In this way, Art acts as a dispositif. 

The vision behind this body of work is connecting an established link between a set of discourses and breaking down the preconceived notions of institutional and traditional ways of art-making through demonstrations of altar-building and shrine construction. Thus creating an intersecting link functioning as a technology of power or an apparatus into the unseen. Those of Haughton fragmented memories, and cultural social political undertones constitute the conceptual exploration of the thing in itself, that of the artist’s subconscious Being.

From the artist, “I am exploring this idea of using found objects as retainers of memory, with the possibility of rebirth accessed through a series of interventions that are used to create impromptu altars, vessels of resistance, and healing. I gathered and assembled these objects by sacking to create renewed forms. The act of tying, braiding, draping fabrics, collaging images, beading bottles, drawing, and painting become ritualized. Thus acting as portals to the subconscious mind, with the intent of materializing memory.”