Project 25
Naturalezxs No Binarixs : Non-binary Natures - Raechel Teitelbaum
Curated by Tsering Frykman-Glen
November 12th - December 3rd 2021, Tangent Projects gallery. Screenings of Unearth Me and See Me Wildly Dance - Saturday 13th and Friday 19th of November at 7pm. In collaboration with Loop Barcelona.
Click here to watch Raechel talk about their exhibition with Laura Alsina on L’H Digital TV.
In Naturalezxs No Binarixs : Non-binary Natures, Raechel utilizes multi-disciplinary artmaking practices to work to imagine possible transformations that humans, plants, animals, and technology could undergo collectively through processes of queer worlding.
Worlding can be defined by Donna Haraway as “storytelling and fact telling; it is the patterning of possible worlds and possible times, material-semiotic worlds, gone, here, and yet to come''. Queer worlding, may then be understood as telling and listening to these stories of fact and fiction through a queer lens; one that embraces nonbinary, fluid, and nonnormative modes of existence and connection. Using queer worlding tactics, these works intend to break down artificial binary classifications such as man/woman, nature/technology, and human/nonhuman to explore the continuum of possible futures and presents that re-imagine gender, sexuality, nature, society, and hierarchies on earth.
Naturalezxs No Binarixs : Non-binary Natures builds upon Raechel's prior work in Prototypes for a Feminist Future with Tangent Projects*. In this body of work, Raechel aims to imagine and create worlds that operate outside of the guidelines that cis-heteronormative society has created surrounding norms of gender, sexuality, and relationships to others and the planet. This exhibition encompasses both individual and collaborative works, which follow similar threads of thought. In their individual works, Raechel utilizes a range of digital media techniques including film, video, 3D modelling, virtual reality, animation, coding, and layering as well as hands-on techniques such as sewing, painting, and costume design. The experimental and DIY nature of the works, for example, the appearance of the underlying 3D software in their videos is critical to their practice, as it intentionally works to playfully reconfigure the audience’s preconceptions to expose the messiness, liminality, and queerness of reality and ‘nature’.
The collaborative piece, Unearth Me and See Me Wildly Dance is an art film based in a fantasy queer mythology about monsters, humans, and spirits, primarily by queer and non-binary artists Raechel Teitelbaum and Brody Mace-Hopkins. This project arose through collaborations with LGBTQ+ and women artists and performers including Joa Blumenkranz, Tara Jerome, Lilith Newson, Arthur Griffiths, Nelly Henzler, Genoa Gray, and Rachel Chevat through costumes, sound, and performance. This piece was rooted in an interest to engage in skill sharing, mutual support, and building worlds collectively to begin deconstructing some of the binary and capitalist approaches to art. The film arose from a series of collaborative gestures that developed organically from an artistic and personal connection with Joa Blumenkranz, a transgender, queer visual artist.
Unearth Me and See Me Wildly Dance was initially a poem written by Raechel, which later became the basis for the film and script that was born from their interactions with Brody’s artwork and artist statement. Throughout the UK’s winter and spring lockdown, Raechel and Brody worked intensely on developing several handmade, felt costumes and masks as well as resin, latex, and other forms of mixed material and fabric costumes as well as a script. Through performance, costumes, film, and sound, these creatures and their stories were brought into existence using collective experiences, bodies, and imagination. Unearth Me and See Me Wildly Dance will be individually screened at various points throughout the exhibition in cooperation with Loop Festival.
*Naturalezxs No Binarixs : Non-binary Natures by Raechel Teitelbaum is a continuation of the exhibition project Prototypes for a Feminist Future, a group exhibition curated by Tsering Frykman-Glen in 2019. The exhibition sought to stimulate a dialogue regarding the potential of non-gendered structures and to explore how to create an equitable microstructure, this would go on to develop the ideological foundation for the Tangent Projects artspace.
Raechel Teitelbaum (they/them) is a visual artist born in Syracuse, New York, currently based in London working primarily with video, film, performance, installation, poetry, and textiles. They studied both in Spain and the United States for their undergraduate degree, graduating from Purchase College with a bachelor’s degree in ‘Media, Society, and the Arts’, an interdisciplinary program that combined fine arts, anthropology, and media studies in 2017. Raechel attended Metàfora Studio Arts Programs in Barcelona, where they completed an advanced arts diploma in 2019. Following this, Raechel completed a Masters of Arts in Digital Media: Image Making, at Goldsmiths, University of London, where they focused on 3D video animation, virtual reality, processing, and coding.
Raechel has exhibited at a variety of galleries in Barcelona including Homesession, Bien Cuadrado, and Àngels Barcelona Espai 2. Raechel is currently attending Goldsmiths, University of London, where they are enrolled in an MPhil/PhD in Visual Anthropology, developing a project surrounding how queer communities engage in practices of queer worlding and develop communities and experimental ways of living and care in rural areas in the Iberian Peninsula.
Collaborators:
Brody Mace-Hopkins is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily with performance, sculpture, and costume, who was born and raised in Glasgow before studying in London. Obtaining a foundation in Fine Art at Blake College, they then went on to specialise in sculpture and performance at Camberwell College of the Arts where they graduated with afirst-class honours in 2020. Brody’s work utilises mythology and the natural world to playwith contemporary psychology and sociology.
Joa Blumenkranz is a visual artist working in the realm of queer fabulation and transgender issues. Through felting, dollmaking, drawing, live performances, and video pieces, Joa’s work seeks to challenge humanity’s current state of being and speculate about its limitations and possibilities, specifically in relation to sex and gender. They graduated from Metàfora Studio Arts Programs with a diploma in Studio Arts in 2019 and they are currently studying at Camberwell College of the Arts in London for their BA in Fine Arts: Sculpture.
Lilith Newson is a performance artist whose practice revolves around expression using the body, and their artist persona, Lilith. Recently, their work has consisted of live and video performances exploring self-love, trauma, non-binary identity, and glamouring. Often, they focus on sexuality, gender identity and body politics, digital intimacy, and achieving transcendent states by means of the body. They also explore the position of the muse, and how abstraction of identity through modification and interpretation confronts uswith the reality of illusion.
Arthur Griffiths is a non-binary musician, poet, photographer, and performer. Through their art, they try to create a space that allows each of us to greater access the collective spirit which permeates all experience. By evoking honesty, communication, and raw self-expression they are an active part of the convergence between the material, ego and the shared abstract realms of imagination and possibility.
Tara Jerome-Bernabé is a multi-disciplinary artist based in London and completing her Bachelors Fine Art Sculpture degree at Camberwell College of the Arts. Tara’s work centres around the question ‘what is lost?’, exploring forgotten modes of communicating with one another and how to reinstall them. Her art and performances are intended to evoke a sense of curiosity into what we can create with our immediate surroundings. And creating our own stories.
Nelly Henzler is an artist and facilitator interested in creating spaces that centre around care. With a background in neuroscience, herbalism, sex education and mysticism, Nelly’s work is focused on empowerment and creating community spaces that consider the non-human, plant, animal, and fungi members of the community just as much as the human members.