prima materia

Ground Floor Contemporary — Birmingham, AL
June 3 - 20, 2021

curated by Jennifer Marshall

Prima Materia—the precosmogonic void from which all life sprung forth. The sky and earth before they were differentiated into their parts. Chaos and Order contained and yet free.

Prima Materia explores the expansion and differentiation of this holy egg into the world we used to know, where the firmament is just coming into formation and animals now anchored with analogies and epithets develop their consciousness. Prima Materia explores the end days, where the the firmament begins to dissolve into the ether. Where cries from the Animals are unheard or unacknowledged by omniscient Forces, because the beginning must once again become the end.

Title translations:
Temet nosce — Latin: know thyself
Quaere — Latin: to see, to ask, to query; to introduce a question or a doubt
Ubi sunt I — Latin: “Where are…[they]?”; a motif used to meditate on the transient nature of life / Roman numeral “I” as in 1
Ubi sunt II — Latin: “Where are…[they]?”; a motif used to meditate on the transient nature of life / Roman numerals “II” as in 2