White Rush, 2018
Solo exhibition
AREA Gallery, Boston, MA
With an allusion to W.B. Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan,” the work in White Rush draws on classical motifs as a means to examine questions of power, gender, visibility, celebrity and historical permanence. The work was anchored by About A Girl, a two-channel video work in which the artist inhabits the roles of the mythological Leda and grunge rock icon Kurt Cobain. The video—which incorporates elements from narrative cinema, music video, and experimental film—examines the inherently gendered processes through which cultural stories congeal into collective, historical meaning. A related suite of sculptures, fabricated out of feathers and steel, evoke fragments of human, animal and mechanical bodies, play with tensions between representation and abstraction through their material combinations and at once alien and familiar contusions.
The exhibition opening also featured an original operatic work written by Rettmer and composed by John Aylward.
Work also exhibited at:
Constellations Eek’o’ob, CAD+SR Merida, El Caimito, Merida, MX
Fábrica de Arte, Havana, Cuba
RAGE/RESIST, Artist’ Television Access, San Fransisco, CA