As a culmination of her Stanley Picker Fellowship research, Oreet Ashery presents Revisiting Genesis, a new major commission taking the form of a web-series in twelve episodes which remain on view online also after the exhibition. Written and directed by the artist, Revisiting Genesis explores the philosophical, sociopolitical, practical and emotional implications of the processes surrounding death and withdrawal, digital afterlives, outsider communities, social networks and reincarnations of women artists. With a new episode released weekly, the online narrative unfolds in parallel to Ashery’s exhibition at Stanley Picker Gallery, which transforms the space into an interactive, social environment inspired by local community centres.
Revisiting Genesis follows two nurses, both named Jackie, who assist people actively preparing for death to create biographical slideshows serving as their posthumous digital legacy. The slideshows become a tool for reflection on cultural and social loss, friendships and memory as identity. When a group of friends request this treatment for Genesis – an artist who is dying symbolically and otherwise – Nurse Jackie attempts to activate Genesis’ memory through the making of her slideshow, which draws from elements of Ashery’s own autobiography and explores the disappearance of social and educational structures under contemporary neoliberalism. Jackie concludes that it might not be Genesis who is vanishing, but the structures she had relied on. Presented in parallel with Genesis’ story, the twelve episodes are intercut with improvised interviews between individuals with life-limiting conditions and Nurse Jackie, played here by a practising GP.
Developed in consultation with Medical and Death Online experts, including researchers at Kingston University, and produced with a range of artistic collaborators, Revisiting Genesis responds to diverse influences spanning from feminist art practice to outsider and minority politics, as well as the emergent online death industry.
Oreet Ashery is a UK based interdisciplinary artist whose politically charged and socially engaged practice includes exhibitions, performances, videos and writings, in an international context, that explore issues of gender materiality, potential communities and biopolitics. Recent presentations include Fig.2 (ICA, London 2015), Animal with a Language (waterside contemporary, London 2014), The World is Flooding (Tate Modern, London 2014) and Party for Freedom (Artangel 2012-13). A current Stanley Picker Fellow in Fine Art at Kingston University, Ashery is represented by waterside contemporary.
Revisiting Genesis is commissioned by the Stanley Picker Fellowships at Kingston University and supported by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Tyneside Cinema, Goldsmiths University of London and waterside contemporary.
