Janus *pause* leaking fortified enclaves
2020
Sapele Mahogany and fluids
The Door of the Woman is the glass slipper
(Atlas, in transit laid to rest)
2022
Wood, plastic string, metal and glass
The Kitchen partners with Berggruen Arts & Culture to present two works by artist, writer, and poet Rhea Dillon (b.1996, London) that act as sculptural interventions within Palazzo Diedo. Here, The Kitchen expands its relationship with Dillon, having presented her film (Working Title) Browning 2025 (2021) in The Kitchen’s online Video Viewing Room in 2022.
In Janus *pause* leaking fortified enclaves (2020), Dillon questions the Black woman’s access to amorphicity, via a consideration of Jesus’ shapeshifting and crucifixion, to connect Christianity and colonisation. Colonised cultures were “sanitised” through Christianity, wherein water offered spiritual sanitisation, echoed in the postmodern preoccupation with hyper-sanitary spaces. Janus slowly drips water, equivalent to the slippage of global class and colonial structures, much like a “leaking fortified enclave”. Dillon inquires: who will be tasked with cleaning up this mess: the artist, the institution — or will we all be responsible?
The Door of the Woman is the glass slipper (Atlas, in transit laid to rest) (2022) assembles three sourced objects continuing Dillon’s rewriting of the Greek god Atlas as a Black woman; resurrecting the reproductive labour required of Black women to sustain neoliberal capitalism. Vessels are significant for Dillon in their moving of bodies during the slave trade, the Windrush migration, and as carriers of souls after life passes.
