by Alison Hugill // Mar. 6, 2026
This article is part of our feature topic Abjection.
French feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva opens her 1980 essay on abjection, entitled ‘Powers of Horrors,’ as follows: “There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside.” Going on to describe the slippery, borderlessness that threatens our stable sense of subject and object—excrement, waste, corpses, bodily fluids like blood, pus or vomit—Kristeva outlines the visceral and emotional reaction we feel towards things that we cannot easily define within the symbolic order, which through their eruption bring us closer to our sense of mortality and the materiality of death.
In this deeply psychoanalytic text, Kristeva identifies the mother as our first “object,” describing the process of becoming an individual as a process of making the maternal body abject. The breast and its milk, like the previously mentioned bodily fluids, are at once life-sustaining and somehow excessive or shameful. The sense of defilement brought on by the abject provokes a twofold reaction of fascination and horror, eroticism and repulsion, making abjection a topic that is ripe for artistic interpretation.
Petra Oriešková: ‘The Friend,’ 1990 // Photo © The Prague City Gallery
For this theme, we begin with a review by Carolina Sculti, of the exhibition ‘The Double’ at Prague City Gallery (GHMP). Describing the uncanny quality of the works in the show, Sculti writes: “The double, or doppelgänger, has captivated the human imagination for centuries…our fascination with these figures arises from the tension between recognition and threat—between the self that is you and the aspects of the self that are repressed, denied or unconscious. In this case, the double functions as the abject, threatening the unity of the self and producing a sense of horror.” In this sprawling group show, we are asked to encounter ourselves again and again, “sometimes with fear, sometimes with relief.”
Jagoda Bednarsky: ‘Shadowland (Volcano),’ 2024, 88 x 75 cm, oil, acrylic, pastel chalk on canvas // Photo by Hans-Georg Gaul
Later, Gillian Osborne speaks with Berlin-based artist Jagoda Bednarsky about her large-scale paintings of dreamy landscapes, often depicting breast-mountains and milk fog. As Osborne writes, her work references the current obsession with wellness and pits this against the feminine body’s refusal to remain stable, whole and perfect throughout its life cycle. While motherhood and bodily changes have been a central topic of her work in recent years, her paintings challenge us to sit with the body in a state of becoming, as something incomplete and messy.
William Joys: One Man Show at Kunstraum // Photo by Nat Arazmatova
William Kherbek will contribute an interview with London-based performance artist William Joys, whose work is described as “performing through layers of subterfuge.” In many of his performances, he becomes, quite literally, an object, embodying the prop, the stage, the costume, in order to expose and promote the art of “actressing.” Often constructing elaborate structures around his body, Joys eludes to a hybrid state between human being and furniture, and his monologues, as Kherbek describes them, are often about the tension between being wretched and imperious at once.
Marianna Uutinen: ‘Who’s Afraid of Red Stains and Yellow Snow,’ 2026, installation view at Hua International Berlin // Photo by Joe Clark, courtesy of the artist and Hua International
Discussing her recently opened exhibition ‘Who’s Afraid of Red Stains and Yellow Snow?’ at Berlin’s Hua International, artist Marianna Uutinen will speak with contributor Lars Holdgate about her paintings, which she approaches as a material event rather than an image. The exhibition’s press release describes her works as “attacks on surface” which show us “what’s hidden, a whiff of what we would otherwise never smell.” The red stains and yellow snow referenced in the title point to abject impurities: “the paintings’ sexuality bursts into life; their materiality is human. A poem of cracking, undulating skin.”
Marina Abramović: ‘Women Massaging Breasts’ from the series ‘Balkan Erotic Epic,’ 2005, Serbia, C-Print // © Marina Abramović, courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026
For another contribution to the topic, Carolin Kralapp will review Marina Abramović’s solo exhibition ‘Balkan Erotic Epic,’ opening at Gropius Bau in April. Kralapp describes its raw depictions of the body in ritualistic states—with women beating their chests and massaging their breasts in lamentation, as well as naked bodies entwined with skeletons and bones—as touching on the erotic thresholds of life and death.
Drawing on depictions and concepts of degradation and filth, this topic considers that which we are forced to exclude in order to maintain a sense of identity and social order, but which persists and resists despite our concerted attempts at control.
