Data_Blood 2.0: A Glitch

Alice Morey

Emily Mulenga

Curated by Wil Ceniceros and Luz Hitters.

16 John Islip St, Westminster, London SW1P 4JU, UK

30 May — 1 June 2019

The Chelsea College of Art Cookhouse Gallery is pleased to present Data_Blood 2.0: A Glitch, the second UK exhibition by Alice Morey (b. 1986, London) and Emily Mulenga (b. 1991, Burton-on-Trent). Through the installation, the artists explore humanity’s concern with ensuring human survival, the pursuit for longevity and the quest for immortality. They intertwine controversial topics including medical advancements, technology, what it means to be human, consciousness and evolution. They portray a dystopian future taking place in a surgery room where a hybrid of the organic and technology is pulsating.

Data_Blood 2.0: A Glitch showcases an evolved work by Morey and Mulenga touching on Sigmund Freud’s notion of the uncanny. Morey is predominantly known for works involving decay, femininity and violence through organic materials, while Mulenga investigates pleasure, anxiety, and desire through digital art. Together, like goddesses, they portray a parallel universe, a dream-like reality inhabited by seemingly-familiar creations that are grotesque and tantalising at the same time. They act as modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, bringing to life a contemporary creature whose life depends on a tablet and narrates a surreal experience.

Morey and Mulenga’s exhibition invites the viewer to contemplate and question future possible outcomes where the data and the blood become one. They expose the instability and the threat of this relationship from the creature’s perspective by narrating its experience after awakening. With the help of the synthetic scent and voices the viewer is transported into this parallel reality, a prototype of experiments that may happen or might be happening in the present. Data_Blood 2.0: A Glitch’s strength lies in the exhibition’s ability to tackle a timeless concern for humankind from a contemporary perspective: overcoming death. Alice Morey lives and works between London and Berlin, Emily Mulenga lives and works in London. 

The exhibition is curated by Luz Hitters and Wil Ceniceros and will be on view from 30 May to 1 June 2019 at the Cookhouse Gallery at the Chelsea College of Art in London.