Emergency Ex

Catinca Tabacaru Gallery is thrilled to present Emergency Ex (2022) by Catinca Malaimare, an intimate encounter between human bodies and machines. In a choreography of movement, sound and light, human and non-human actors become equal collaborators in creating a sensuous and otherworldly environment. Suggesting not just a technical, but an affective codependency between us and our screens, Emergency Ex conjures a not-so-distant future where face and interface have become indistinguishable. Accompanying the film is a text written by Pita Arreola-Burns and Elliott Burns, intended as an aid to the installation, as an explanation it intentionally fails.

The screening of Emergency Ex will be followed by a dialogue between the artist Catinca Malaimare and gallerist Catinca Tabacaru.

With the occasion of the exhibition, the opening dinner masquerades as an Eucharist or a Communion table, reflecting the artist’s interest in anthropomorphic bodies becoming duplicates without a human corporeality. Preceding the Christmas period, artisanal Romanian bread and wine served as a symbolic representation of the flesh and blood of Jesus, intermingled until the boundaries between human and non-human have been diluted beyond our ability to taste.

Catinca Malaimare (b. 1996) is a London-based Romanian artist. She completed her postgraduate studies from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2022. Performing alongside anthropomorphised technologies, Malaimare’s choreography manifests our intimate relationship with photographic tools and the screens onto which they project our visages. Malaimare has exhibited internationally in both institutional and gallery contexts. Recent projects include a solo presentation of the artist’s thesis show in the RA Show 2022, Emergency Ex, Very Contemporary Performance Festival Cross Border, Somers Gallery, 20th Pancevo Biennial (Serbia), led by independent curator Maja Ćirić, Staycation, a collaborative symposium and exhibition at Catinca Tabacaru Gallery and Sandwich in Bucharest (2021-2022).

With generous support from Optoma Europe Ltd.
Filmed at Optoma Warehouse, Hemel Hempstead, UK

Film Credits:
A film by Catinca Malaimare
Director of Photography: Rocio Chacon
Soundscape & Sound Design: Joshua Fay