Enter Subterranea 2019

Enter Subterranea, 2019

Silkscreen print on fabric

9m x 75cm

Enter Subterranea explores the simultaneous importance and lack of importance of humankind. Beings higher and lower than we could ever imagine speak to us, warning us, and remind us of our humility, our naivety, and our eventual decomposition.

Inspired by Donna Haraway exploration of the ‘Cthonic ones’ in her text Staying with the Trouble:

“Chthonic ones are beings of the earth, both ancient and up- to- the- minute. I imagine chthonic ones as replete with tentacles, feelers, digits, cords, whiptails, spider legs, and very unruly hair. Chthonic ones romp in multicritter humus but have no truck with sky- gazing Homo. Chthonic ones are monsters in the best sense; they demonstrate and perform the material meaningfulness of earth processes and critters. They also demonstrate and perform consequences. Chthonic ones are not safe; they have no truck with ideologues; they belong to no one; they writhe and luxuriate in manifold forms and manifold names in all the airs, waters, and places of earth. They make and unmake; they are made and unmade. They are who are. No wonder the world’s great monotheisms in both religious and secular guises have tried again and again to exterminate the chthonic ones.”