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Encyclia imagosis
Taphonomy
ROSEMARY HALL
January 28 – February 11, 2024
On the one hand, Encyclia Imagosis reads like a spell, and on the other the scientific discourse of taxonomy. Encyclia Imagosis stems from Greek, enkykleomai, “to encircle”, imago, imagination’s root, and osis, a suffix denoting a process or condition. Encyclia Imagosis casts a spell on categorical fixity. It proposes a cyclical destabilization and refashioning of imagination’s role in the processes of transformation, like a child’s incantation challenging the malaise of taxonomy.
Many real creatures are stranger than imagined. Take the caterpillar, for instance. They undergo a fascinating transformation within a chrysalis, releasing enzymes that dissolve their own body into liquid. Amidst this breakdown, only specialized structures called imaginal discs persist, capable of reshaping the dissolved larval tissues into a completely new entity. Through imaginal reconstruction caterpillars push themselves into a different future, the confines of their chrysalis paradoxically enabling their flight forward into the unfamiliar, just as the imagination does for other species.
Encyclia imagosis presents an ongoing project featuring oxidizing chrysalis sculptures. Over time, these sculptures have evolved into distinct entities that respond to their environment and embody transformation through processes of corrosion, collection, imagination, and decomposition.
For this iteration, Taphonomy, which is the study of death and decay becomes a focal point. After Spore Space, the pods will be buried. The show is a send-off. Come spring, they will emerge again, marked by the passage of time and decomposing entities.
Encyclia imagosis, in all its' reconfigurations, seeks to explore an evolutionary world where objects are process and forms evolve, hybridize, and mutate. The project is ongoingness and delves into the various ways we make sense of the world through imagination, metaphor, and material.
