In Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, Anne Carson transposes the Greek
mythological figure Geryon into a contemporary coming-of-age story. Once a red, winged monster slain by Heracles’ arrow, Geryon
is reimagined as a queer teenager navigating questions of identity and desire. In comparing Geryon’s turbulent inner life
to volcanic activity, Carson traces the tension between repression and eruption:
Geryon sat on his bed in the hotel
room pondering about the cracks and fissures
of his inner life. It may happen
that the exit of the volcanic vent
is blocked by a plug of rock, forcing
molten matter sideways along
lateral fissures called fire lips by volcanologists.
[1]
The group exhibition Fire Lips takes this dynamic image of blockage and eruption to explore
instances of repression and the urgent expressions that circumvent them. Repression here is understood both psychologically
and politically: as the mechanism that excludes distressing ideas, feelings, and impulses from consciousness, and as forms
of oppression that constrain agency and participation in social and political life. The works gathered in the exhibition display
how bodies, voices, and desires are regulated and suppressed within societal structures, while also evoking how the repressed
forges new paths and surfaces like fissures and cracks in the dominant order of things.
Johanna Thorell,
curator
With contributions by, among others,
Anne Carson,
VALIE EXPORT,
Johanna
Gustafsson Fürst,
Cole Lu,
mhm, mhm,
Evelyn Plaschg,
Miriam
Stoney,
Mona Vătămanu & Florin TudorCurated by
Johanna Thorell[1] Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red. A Novel in Verse (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998), 105.
Programme:
Uses of pressure
A reading with contributions by Cole Lu and Miriam Stoney
5 June 2026, 6 pmTo mark the closing of the group exhibition Fire Lips (12 March – 6 June 2026), we warmly invite you to Uses of pressure,
a reading by Cole Lu and Miriam Stoney in the exhibition.
Anne Carson, whose writing was a major inspiration for
the exhibition, muses: “a healthy volcano is an exercise in the uses of pressure.” Uses of pressure attends to different modes
of speech and a sense of urgency, as in a pen pressing against paper or the volcanic moment in which the voice pushes through
the vocal tract and breaks into the open. The two artists will read new texts that relate to their works in the exhibition.
Cole Lu’s reading brings together poetry, prose, essay fragments, notes, and excerpts in a constellation of texts.
Like the long titles of his artworks, the writing moves through narration, memory, association, and flash fiction, unfolding
across multiple registers and voices.
In an autobiographical and digressive style, Miriam Stoney’s text probes
the spatial, social and political conditions of artistic production and, in particular, how the everyday bleeds into artmaking.
In a retrospective articulation of the three sculptural works she made for the exhibition, Stoney returns to moments in which
a foreclosed outside resurfaces.
Opening hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 2:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Closed on public holidays
