黑料不打烊

Alina Perez and Arel Lisette鈥檚 two-person show is a holding space. Oh, que Angustia la Mia, a drawing of an overgrown shed from Alina鈥檚 childhood backyard, functions as the subconscious double for every household鈥檚 drawer of cast-off items. These untidy repositories accumulate all the things we cannot seem to let go, kept in reserve for an unspecified future use. Butterfly Graveyard (A Very Hard Truth) recounts a visit to a butterfly sanctuary where Arel, crouched to the ground, discovered the wings of dismembered butterflies floating in a pool of murky water. Similar to Alina鈥檚 shed, this ominous sight stuck in her mind for years, with no obvious reason or meaning, until it took the form of this composition. Butterflies鈥攐ne of several recurring visual motifs in this show鈥攁re signs of transition and transformation, death and disembodiment, and, ultimately, resurrection.

鈥淣ot Dark Yet,鈥� Alina and Arel tell me, was born of revisiting the past. Memory is subjective and highly unstable, and when we return to its shadowy figures and forms, we cannot be sure of what they will have become in our absence and disregard. The act of remembering can also be acutely isolating; not everyone will agree on what transpired. For both artists, drawing is a way to parse through the kinds of complicated experiences that continue to ache after years, even decades. Like memories, drawings can be specters, too, containing moments where their subjects fall apart and are placed back together.

Hope comes in many shades and can be hard to separate from despair, yet Alina and Arel hold that the dead of the past are still alive and, in their very unresolve, can help us understand who we were and what we might become: it is not dark yet, but it鈥檚 getting there.