Alicia Mersy “Wisdom Fertilizer”

Abrons Arts Center

[Image: Alicia Mersy, Still from "Wisdom Fertilizer" (2018)]

This event has ended.

Culpepper and Upper Gallery

Through satirical engagement with new age YouTube self-help coaching videos, popular news media, clip art, and commercial graphic aesthetics, Mersy reflects on the terrors of late capitalism and militarized border control.

Video artist Alicia Mersy presents her most recent series, WISDOM FERTILIZER. Through satirical engagement with new age YouTube self-help coaching videos, popular news media, clip art, and commercial graphic aesthetics, Mersy reflects on the terrors of late capitalism and militarized border control. The four part series considers the possibilities for self actualization within the context of socio-political upheaval.

Alicia Mersy is a new media artist and filmmaker. She was born and raised in Montreal, originally French and Lebanese. In 2013 she graduated from an MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins after studying political sciences. In 2014 she co-founded Malaxa – an art office – whose work explores decolonial aesthetics and political resistance through digital culture, art, documentary and fashion. She now lives in New York but spent the last years in the Middle East. Mainly in Israel (occupied Palestine). There, she finally embraced her looks and origins especially her curly thick hair. She has been exhibited internationally in spaces like The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, UK), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (TLV, Israel), The Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (Zurich, Switzerland). She creates space for conversations, through video, digital images and photography within the themes of self representation, social politics, class guilt politics, race, focusing on the resistance of repressive structures. Her research and collaborations, include digital designs, documentary work and workshops in different political contexts, questioning classical ethnography, counter representation of dominant ideologies and ways of thinking. She cares about marginalized people and representing them in our oppressive white-supremacist society. She hopes to empower people by getting closer, listening to their hearts and by exposing their vision and feelings. She does what she does to grow and build solidarity. She loves free spirits, radicals and revolutionaries.