Molly Palmer is a multidisciplinary artist, working within and between the media of video, sound, choreography, costume, sculpture and installation.
She has had multiple solo exhibitions throughout the world and now presents her first solo exhibition at AKINCI. For this occasion, Palmer has transformed the gallery space into a series of evolving interiors that call upon our senses, combining visuals, sound, and materials whose surface invokes the notion of touch - such as glazed ceramics, wood and felt.
Layered vocals in surround sound are activated by the viewers movement, and draw - together with changing lights and moving sets - the attention of the viewer to different elements in the exhibition.
The works explore complex emotions such as loss and longing, anxiety, depression and grief, and their contribution to evolving our capacity for joy, connection and hope. The cycles of singing use vocalisation to
catalyse healing and soften around the processing of difficult experiences, channeling the voice as a conduit to encode, make strange and rebuild. If reality is something to be experienced, how do we translate internal and subjective experiences to fit within language? And what perspectives are absent from what we perceive as ordinary reality? The works cultivate belief systems that build value around experiences that alter our relation to reality. Palmer’s installation weaves connections between subjective readings of reality, questioning the structure of our shared reality and the shifts of perception that can take place within it. Ceramic coins resembling pills
question a transactional aspect in accepting medication to conform and participate within a collaborative reality. The coins explore the potential spiritual and social value within visions that now fall under diagnosis of psychosis or mental health fluctuation.
A ceramic beheaded woman represents the young Medusa, who transformed into the demonic monster after she was raped by Poseidon in the temple of the goddess Athena. Filled with rage about
the desecration of her holy space, Athena cursed Medusa, giving her a head of snakes and a gaze that turned men to stone. In the installation she stands in solidarity with those who feel othered by stigma or
shame. The sculpture is a symbol of strength born not despite but because of experiences of abuse and suppression.
Believing in the possibility for art spaces to resist or evolve dominant framings of reality, Password opens
the door to a worldmaking that channels our capacity for emotional transformation with tenderness,
compassion and strength.
Artist bio
Molly Palmer (b. 1984) lives and works in Amsterdam. She was Artist in Residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in
Amsterdam in 2021, where she has exhibited at the Open and prepared solo shows for 1646 in the Hague and Ty Pawb in Wales.
She graduated from Royal Academy Schools in 2016, where she was awarded the Gold Medal. She received Arts Council England’s
Creative Practice Development Fund and has exhibited widely at galleries and museums, a.o. Dastan Basement, Tehran (2021);
1946, The Hague (2019); TENT, Rotterdam (2019), Somerset House in London (2018); House of Egorn, Berlin (2018); Art Basel
Miami Beach (2016); Bikini Wax & MUPO, Mexico (2016); Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paolo (2016) and Glasgow Project Room (2018).
Forthcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Bosse and Baum, London and a solo exhibition commissioned by UK Mexican
Art Society at MUAC, Mexico City, curated by Javier Calderon and supported by Mondriaan Fonds.