“Tides in the Body,” a solo exhibition of Hannah Rowan at C+N Gallery CANEPANERI in Milan, echoes the artist’s recent residency in Greenland, where she continued her research on a “liquid relationship between the human body and geological and ecological systems”.1
Art laboratory
Melting, burning, leaking, dissolving, taking root, oxidising, congealing and crystallising are processes employed by Hannah Rowan in her practice. In some of her works, the most apparent transformations of matter occur at the point of creating objects—like in “Prima Materia”, where a cast-bronze sculpture of a hand holds small fragments of lava encased in molten glass. As the artist claims in her interview with Vanessa Murrel2, she’s interested in working with a wide array of materials and forming intricate connections and assemblages. Her current Milanese exhibition, for instance, incorporates sculptures in cast bronze, hand-blown glass, installations with melting ice, ceramics, cyanotypes, photography, and a performance registered on the video.
Visitors as an active part of the process
“Tides in the Body” acts as a graceful laboratory highlighting the constant transmutation of matter, where shifting from solids to liquids or gases happens in front of our eyes. “Vessels of Touch”, for example, is a sculpture representing human hands holding melting pieces of ice that drips down as we wander around the installation. Visitors become an active part of the process. After all, in our most elementary form, we are an organic matter that breaths and emanates heat, directly influencing the outcome of the process set up by the artist. This empirical-level reception is conceived as a prelude to discuss material intimacy, touch, memory, gesture, and the relationship between the body and the earth’s living system. In the words of curator Tatiana Martyanova, cupped hands in “Vessels of Touch” centre Rowan’s interest in “the body as a recipient that holds states of being, a container for tender gestures of touch, kinship, and holding […], evoking a fleeting attempt to hold sacred water, a transitory and leaky vessel.”3
Creating processes and sharing experiences
Another approach implemented by the artist to this exhibition relies neither on displaying the result of the liquidity of physical processes and time (on the one hand, the time is “frozen” in the object, on the other, everything flows) nor on recreating them, thus making them visible and experientable to us. Instead, Rowan delivers a recording of her personal experience, enabling us to experience the emotions that she went through when interacting with nature. “Tides in the Body”, which sets the tone for the entire exhibition lending it its title, are performances with ice and the tides in Greenland, registered on the video, where the artist establishes an unhindered, horizontal relationship with vast areas of water—creating a narration on how the human body is set in relation to the world.
Revival of nature
Fluctuating beliefs and convictions have influenced a definition of a body and its place in the world for centuries. The pandemic has proved that the earth without us is subject to a relatively fast, perceptible change when it comes to the revival of nature. Although this discovery shouldn’t come as a surprise, it enabled us to notice dynamics we had barely reflected on before. When we remove our bodies from the territories we presupposed were ours, nature quickly regains these areas and strengthens its presence there. It reminded us that our dominance is more an artificially imposed arrangement than a natural state of affairs. These shifts in perception make it harder to keep self-declaring ourselves as privileged entities separated and extracted from the rest of the world, claiming rights to hold power over the rest of animate and inanimate beings. There is hardly a reason for us to be so convinced about it other than the habit reinforced by a centuries-long cycle of abuse, where humanity holds a shameful title of a villain.
Manifesting equality
In the video “Tides in the Body”, a repetitive, well-known rhythm of ocean tides (in reference to the title of this exhibition, we can imply this sound is archetypal and inscribed in human nature) magnifies the sensation of co-attending a prayer. The artist’s private, sincere, emotional meeting with nature is seemingly casual, yet, in many ways, resembles a sacred ceremony. Rowan interacts with water as if the two actors were equals. In some scenes, she performs without clothing in order to maximally “downsize” her socially imposed anthropocentric status. Whether the artist’s body floats on a large chunk of ice in the middle of the sea or her hands hold a minor piece of ice that slowly melts, the experience is presumably physically painful because of the cold. A sacrifice involved in the process manifests possible readiness for a transgression, here, of an individual, but hopefully also of the entire society. This mute statement represents the most vulnerable part of the artist’s work.
From Virginia Woolf to hydrofeminism
The title expression “Tides in the body” was first coined by Virginia Woolf and then used by hydrofeminist theorist, Astrida Neimanis. The latter refers to water as a “communicator between bodies” and a “transformative and gestational milieu”.4 Rowan focuses on the “reciprocal relationship between the constellation of matter and forces, which we call our bodies, and its surrounding environment through the connecting qualities of all the watery exchanges we have with the world”—explains Tatiana Martyanova in her critical essay accompanying the exhibition.
Interweaving of physical, psychological, and spiritual realms
The artist skilfully exposes the water’s animated character by taking it by hand, as if it was a wonderful but timid child that needed encouragement to become seen. At the same time, Rowan helps us to see the problem clearer by shifting our perspective between the physical, psychological, and spiritual realms. Although not a political statement at first sight, “Tides in the Body” is not only aligned with hydrofeminist theory and feminist new materialism but also accentuates the urgency to decentralize humans as indisputable rulers—a concept recently vigorously brought up in the context of the climate crisis and then the pandemic. Rowan juxtaposes gargantuan oceans with an inner world of a single person, triggering movement and transformation, thus making a significant contribution to the discourse about ecology and ethics.
Hannah Rowan, “Tides in the Body”
Curated by Tatiana Martyanova
C+N Gallery CANEPANERI, Milan
07.03-24.04.2023
- Press Release of “Tides in the Body”.
- From the interview with Vanessa Murrel @dateagleart.
- Tatiana Martyanova, “Hannah Rowan. Tides in The Body”, 2023.
- Astrida Neimanis, “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water”, 2017.
