TAI SHANI AT SOMERSET SHOW!
22ND OCTOBER 2022 - 19TH FEBRUARY 2023
SOMERSET HOUSE - LONDON
The Neon Hieroglyph is a site-specific sculptural installation by British artist and Turner Prize winner Tai Shani. Presented during Spoleto64 Festival dei Due Mondi inside the Fountain of Piazza del Mercato, it was later included in The Horror Show! The Twisted Tale of Modern Britain. The major group exhibition at Somerset House in London brought together — in three thematic sections titled Monster, Ghost, and Witch — works by some of the most important and provocative figures in contemporary British art, including Jake & Dinos Chapman, Derek Jarman, Cornelia Parker, Gavin Turk, Rachel Whiteread, and many others. Moving from the punk universe to the revolutionary potential of contemporary horror, the exhibition explored how the supernatural and the alchemical anarchy of subversion can help us make sense of the world around us. The final scene of the exhibition presented, for the first time in the United Kingdom, The Neon Hieroglyph, accompanied by a specially commissioned audio installation by Gazelle Twin created expressly for The Horror Show!
Shani drew inspiration from poetic reflections on ergot, the fungus from which LSD is derived. Once common in European wheat fields, it was often consumed unknowingly, inducing hallucinatory states and giving rise to stories of esotericism and mysticism. The artist links these histories to her ongoing investigations into psychedelia, feminism, and myth. The work also exists as a nine-part film. Episode 7 — specifically connected to the region of Umbria — was presented at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Spoleto, within the Museo di Palazzo Collicola, as part of the exhibition project Exploring Art, funded by the Carla Fendi Foundation and realized under the artistic direction of Guy Robertson, curator of the Mahler & LeWitt Studios.
Courtesy of the Somerset House
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