Hannah Black, Aeter, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, 2019

“Hey”, “Hey you”, “It’s just”: three phrases on three monitors in three different locations. All with flushed red screens. The works are titled, “Hey 1”, “Hey 2” and “Hey 3” and are part of an edition of five made by Hannah Black in 2018. The monitors were on the floor and the text appeared in long intervals making it easy to miss. “Hey”, “Hey you” is a pointing finger. “It’s just…” is a shrug: someone who can’t speak or express discomfort. “It’s just”… that…(looking down at the feet)…this exhibition is about shame, and those who have the power to produce it in others. I attended to the video works within the show first because their colouration made strange aura, an intellectual-physical limbo. It felt new to me from the outside but familiar within my interior as one of unrest. In this exhibition Black uses well the complexions of the body to manifest the confused simultaneous state of being witnessed and consumed, empowered and persecuted. Not the blatant blood red or flesh tones one is used to experiencing when dealing with the body but the much more real dirty yellow-whites of bone, muttled pinks of flesh and grisaille of sickness and death. So it was Black’s videos that caught me, that perfectly harnessed the mixed-bag that is embarrassment. The video of titular name “Aeter (Sam)”, 2018 lived within a small room in the gallery separated by a yellow door with a lock and key. In the work a young man with an adorably short bowl-cut recalls a sports injury and the process of healing, and the failure to heal. More notably he casually and briefly mentions something akin to playing sports because it was expected of him. Across the gallery, in another small, private viewing room, a second video shows ‘Jack’ of “Aeter (Jack)”, 2018 biting his nails. “…sometimes I hold it in my fingers for a while…as if anyone is really inspecting what you do with your hands on a train…having your hands in your mouth is like a boundary-less child thing…you just want to feel your own spit.” Having understood that what I encountered were two confessionals on loop, Black’s sculptural works began to profess more clearly. <a href="https://medium.com/@jasminereimer/hannah-black-aeter-galerie-isabella-bortolozzi-2019-fbf00012edd0">Click Here</a>