Hilma's Ghost
Personal Shopper (Still from video), 2016. Dir. Olivier Assayas. Image from criterionforum.org.
The terse ghost story and thriller Personal Shopper made by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas (2016) provides a productive point of departure for the group-show Spiritual Abstractions. This exhibition gathers works by intergenerational women, transitional or fluid artists including Tania Candiani, Hilma’s Ghost, Kati Horna, Magali Lara, France-Lise McGurn, Vibe Overgaard, and Salmo Suyo.
The works selected for this group show unfold premonitory questions that examine how women's struggles affect and matter to the immediate political future of humanity. Assayas’ suggestive yet problematic piece of contemporary cinematic fiction serves as a productive framework that allows to explore new methodologies and formal strategies deployed by women artists, which to some extent can be traced back to historical Spiritualist abstraction.
