47 Canal

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (July 3–August 7, 2020)

Ashes of Zion (May 6th - June 10th)

Emmanuel Louisnord Desir's exhibition, Ashes of Zion, masterfully utilizes painting and sculpture to employ a skeuomorphic glitching technique, delving into biblical narratives and collective histories. While deeply rooted in the American vernacular, Desir's art derives its energy from the artist's remarkable ability to imbue wood with a softness that transcends material resistance. His allegorical metanarrative unfolds from the garden to the fall of Babylon, portraying biblical suffering as grotesques of survival, with figures morphing between objecthood and subjecthood.

Desir's sculptures, exemplified by "A Stiff Necked People" and "Grandpa’s Infirmity Couch," embody biomorphic tensions and abject erotics, resisting authoritarianism and embracing open-ended processes. The segmented bodies suggest an ongoing self-engineering or physical mitosis, rejecting closure and acting as trees with diverse roots. The paintings, softened by the wood panel's resistance, evoke egg tempera icons, while Desir draws inspiration from the Old and New Testament narratives, intertwining political critique with allegorical phrasing.

In works like "The Transformation of the Meek Hearted," Desir employs the skeuomorphic glitch as a dominant strategy, akin to artists such as Augusta Savage, Martin Puryear, and Simone Leigh. This technique maps a political language, reflecting an active and unsettled hybrid reality for people of color. Desir skillfully parallels the biblical narrative with the Black diaspora, foregrounding the heroism of endurance and survival. Through phase-shifting bodies and a profound processing of time, Desir's art extends affective formations from the deep past into the distant future, offering a new reservoir of access and modes of being.