AWITA X JW ANDERSON

CORPOREAL GLITCH

Liz Calvi, Curated by Irena Seager

“Can there be a new women whose écriture feminine is not shamed, censored or omitted from the digital sphere?”– Liz Calvi

Calvi looks to feminist theorists like Hélène Cixous while imagining the educational and emancipatory potential within the digital sphere. Invested in mental health & sexual politics, she considers how a world increasingly mediated by technology and digital communications impacts how we create, view, and digest the self. Calvi frequently explores how iconography is recycled, reconfigured, and perpetuated from the silver screen to a digital sphere to consider the enmeshment of celebrity culture and American identity. Reacting against the censorship of female sexuality within the digital sphere, she blends research and found materials with her own photographs, writing, and video work to use subjectivity as a strategy of resistance.

In her most recent exhibition, "Corporeal Glitch" Calvi reappropriates negatives of pin-up girls her father found in the trash to pay homage to some of the earliest acts of female agency regarding representation and sexual freedom. Instead of kicking the male gaze to the curb, Calvi acknowledges the complicated history of the pin-up in this body of work titled "My Girls". Drawing from surrealist and feminist collage influences Calvi utilizes a female gaze to re-narrate how women internalize and define female sexuality. The show blends her digital manipulations with a series of questions by the artist that are generally reserved for artists and critics in order to break down systemic barriers. Calvi positions herself within the mediums to encourage the creation of digital fiction for reflexive uses as opposed to self-imposed discipline, while taking a holistic educational approach to examining visual culture's significance in contemporary life.

Calvi additionally experiments with digital fiction by reimagining famous artworks and female characters in her recent series of photographs "Après...". The Swing (after Fragonard) reconsider's the playful musings of desire and power from the original painting. Calvi filters the Rococo style through a contemporary lens to explore femininity with the drama and whimsy of Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Calvi and her muse collaborate to create freer, more audacious photographs that use experimental techniques to contemplate perception. The two cheekily blend high art with mass media and pop culture references, as Cosette (after The Sopranos) highlights the decadence and frivolity within the image world through provocative humor.

Liz Calvi (b. 1990 Hartford, USA) lives and works between London & Connecticut, USA. Her practice encompasses photography, collage, video, writing, and installation with critical concerns regarding performance, sexuality, autobiography, identity, and digital media. Focusing on the portrayal of subjectivity and sexuality within an increasingly digital sphere public sphere Calvi draws inspiration from surrealist and feminist collage as an act of resistance while also considering how we consume and depict images of women.

Calvi received her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths in 2019. Recent exhibitions include Corporeal Glitch (Seager, 2022), All About the Light (Griffin Museum of Photography 2020), and her first solo show in London: Shadow Screens (Seager, 2019). Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Aint-Bad, Der Greif, and The Guardian. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in several public & private collections. Calvi's work is in multiple limited-edition books including: Me, Myself and AI, Vuu Super Special Vol. 2, and The Blue Library Vol. 2, which is in the permanent collection of Antenna in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

Irena Seager is the Founder and Director of SEAGER Gallery. She has built this Deptford space from scratch premised on doing things differently. Rather than the traditional model of signing artists, Irena at Seager has preferred a “family-style arrangement”, quickly proving herself by showing young and sought-after artists. SEAGER’s programme is focused on art that uses digital technology in its process, as its product, or as its subject. By bringing digital methods into the physical gallery space, SEAGER endeavours to reflect on the implementations of digitization for society and provides a context for new positions around art and life to emerge.