Jenny Schmid | Owlettes, 2023

74 x 37 cm

Edition of 15

My current series of multiple plate intaglios present a cast of characters emerging from a hybrid location, where the river Styx meets the Bardo. In this ferry/fairy waiting room, images float and emerge from orifices, colors are hyper saturated, and ghosts and humans pass through each other without hesitation. Interspecies communication is the norm and apparitions are your best friend, until they are not. Transmuting the history of feminist surrealism (Carrington, Varo) into the present political moment, these etchings present a witchy response to the absurdity of recent restrictions on bodily autonomy. By casting a spell, we are morphed into an owl, a vampire, a blue girl convening with a dead smoker. Like Daphne, we resist and survive by transforming. The pandemic reminds us of our transient state as we pass through this moment in time, made partly of stardust from The Big Bang, partly of plastics from the deep sea; in due time we return to both. Spit bite, aquatint, multiple layers of rich color, working and reworking plates in search of the ultimate ephemeral tone- these alchemic techniques facilitate the ethereal portraits of my strange beings of resistance. In contrast to the bean counters, warmongers and neoliberal logic that got us into this vortex of death cult capitalism, a brief daydream returns us to our animal state, embracing us with a strange taxonomy, like a sweater from the thrift store, imbued with our collective dream of warmth.