Coinciding with Frieze London, Nobu Hotel London Portman Square presents The Dwelling, a new site-responsive installation by Annie Trevorah, presented by Mandy Zhang Art and curated by Joséphine May Bailey.
The Dwelling takes the Earth as a shared home. Across the White Box exhibition space, foyer and lounge, Trevorah fills the hotel in Marylebone with speculative beings and imagined ecologies, made in sculpture, textile and print. Her world is one of transformation, where human, animal and landscape flow into one another.
At its centre stands Becoming, a monumental sculpture and the heart of the exhibition. Male and female, human and animal, the figure holds many bodies in one form. Animal heads merge with human limbs. Neither reads alone. It is a work in the lineage of Surrealism, where the body is dreamed open, and of feminist thought, which has long refused the idea that identity is fixed. Donna Haraway asks us to make kin with other species, to see ourselves as creatures among creatures. Becoming gives that idea a body. It does not imagine humans turning into animals. It reminds us we never stopped being them.
Around it, the Human Chrysalis series suspends mirrored chrome figures above sculptural flora and printed silk panels of imagined ecosystems. The chrome catches the viewer’s reflection and pulls them into the work. To look is to become part of it.
For the duration of Frieze London, The Dwelling makes Nobu Hotel a habitat of its own, a place where self and other, human and animal, are not divided but entwined.
Opening Reception: Friday 9 October 6-9PM
Location: The White Box, Nobu Hotel London Portman Square, London W1H 7BG
For any inquiries, please contact info@mandyzhang.art
