Creeps and Butterflies
EXHIBITION
26/09 - 03/11
Museum of Contemporary Art
Grand Opening: 26/09 at 20:00
Curators: Barbara Gregov, Lovro Japundžić, Lea Vene
The term quickly went viral and became the face of a fresh take on contemporary beauty – the latest iteration of the aesthetics of ugliness. The ugly seemed to have seeped into every pore of visual culture, from the Internet to contemporary art. The messy, the raw, and the hideous slowly pushed out sleek looks and polished images. The weirdos took center stage. We embraced smudges. Dirt. Alien vibes. Welcomed ugly ducklings. Killjoys. Chaos. Everything macabre. Opened doors to ‘bad beauties’, ‘trashy girls’ and ‘creepy cuties’. ‘Feral girl summers’ and ‘anarchist femme baking’. All the strangely defiant micro-trends. The Y2K, in general.
Goblin mode came to represent a somewhat grotesque, yet poignant rejection of perfectionism. It emerged as a way of seeing, but also as a mode of being — an unfiltered response to spiritual nihilism triggered by the current state of global affairs, by the imminence of the world falling apart.
The exhibition Creeps and Butterflies presents the works of ten artists who engage with ugliness in various ways – for them, it serves as a means of reckoning with the imposed ideals of beauty, social norms, and artistic conventions, while also providing a space for play, research, experimentation, and freedom from inhibitions.
For some artists, ugliness serves as the lens through which they observe contemporary photographic phenomena and trends. Annemarija Gulbe, Anna Ansone, and Krišjānis Elviks parodically interpret “the thirst trap,” a popular genre of social media imagery designed solely to attract viewers’ attention. In contrast, Zhao Qian sees photography as a complex interplay between reality and illusion, while Hugo Laporte transforms pornographic images into decorative mosaics using artificial intelligence, imbuing them with the functions of fetish and ornament.
In the works of Julie Folly and Stacy Kranitz, ugliness takes the form of catharsis. Folly blurs the lines between pleasure and discomfort, demonstrating that sensuality and pain can coexist as equal aspects of bodily pleasure. Kranitz, on the other hand, both questions and affirms aggression as a release mechanism; after the initial shock and repulsion, explicit photos of violence, brutality, and destruction can evoke delight and fascination.
Milena Soporowska, Valerie Geissbühler, and Clémence Elman connect their life stories and intimate experiences to various “ugly,” trivializing, or marginalizing histories. Soporowska seeks to free spiritualism from its repressive past; Geissbühler confronts colonial history through the fictionalization of her own family story, which she centers around the vivid motif of the potato; and Elman uses her Romanian heritage as a springboard to reflect on the broader political and aesthetic legacy of the vampire.
For Teo Ala-Ruona and Marianna Nardini, ugliness manifests or results from contemporary social perceptions and pressures. In Ala-Ruona’s performance, frustration with social norms of gender and body takes the form of a euphoric affirmation of trans masculinity. On the other hand, Nardini’s work underscores the superficiality of heterosexual romance through an ironic idealization of a love story involving the artist and her decaying boyfriend – a simple red cabbage.
With Creeps and Butterflies, we tried to present diverse forms of contemporary disobedience. Micro-rebellions, gut reactions, instincts, intense yearnings, and bizarre obsessions — the strange and the weirdly visceral. Ugliness here is not only a form of aesthetic resistance — it is also a kick, release, and consolation; an unusual, uneasy, but authentic attempt to find meaning in the chaotic world we live in.