Lillies in the Headlights
Commissioned Essay: Manifestnation
Featuring new works from artists Romeo Roxman Gatt and Loreum, and virtual interactive experiences from creative technologist Costas Kazantzis, Lillies in the Headlights is an online exhibition that investigates the instability of desire and its ambiguous role in processes of identity formation. The exhibition also features a collection of texts that further expand Gatt and Loreum’s visual dialogue.
I was commissioned to contribute an essay aimed at contextualizing Loreum’s featured works. Manifestnation, focuses on the rise and fall of Marysville, CA, Loreum’s hometown and the subject of his artmaking.
Once on track to become “the New York of the Pacific,” Marysville is now a little-known city caught at the intersection of economic oppression, drug production and addiction, and the housing crisis. Manifestnation traces Marysville’s history from the town’s Donner Party origins to the present day, revealing throughlines of subjugation, violence, and exploitation that exemplify some of America’s most urgent issues and fundamental flaws.
Lillies in the Headlights was curated by Giulia Menegale and produced with the support of Arts Council England. This essay was published alongside writings from Eleonora Luccarini, Louis Mason, D Mortimer, Rebecca Jagoe.
A preview of the online exhibition
The Jungle, 2021 - Oil on canvas on wood panel. A precursor to Lillies in the Headlights, Loreum installed an exhibition of his works in an abandoned house across the street from his childhood home.
“In my hometown, there was always, in some form, a nomadic encampment of houseless Marysvillians who had taken up residence in the riparian forests along the river,” Loreum writes in a description of this painting. “Affectionately known as ‘The Jungle’ by its inhabitants and to locals. Old cars, vans, RVs, scraps, and tarps had been configured to form a small shanty town, not unlike the same encampments photographed in the same place with the same conditions (and likely with the descendants of) those famous dustbowl photographs of Dorothea Lange.”