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Ek Myerson - In every era the attempt II.JPG

In Every Era the Attempt Must Be Made (II)
2024
Acrylic on Newsprint
Not for sale
 
The series title alludes to Walter Benjamin’s statement that: ‘in every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it’. The works in this series speak to E.K.’s experience of transphobia in the UK, as a transmasculine person, and witnessing the Palestinian genocide, as a British Jew. E.K. chose the medium of newsprint collage after researching Derek Jarman and Lubaina Himid, two very different artists whose equally hilarious and furious responses to daily papers provided him with a visual language. Inspired by Himid’s series Negative Positives (2007–), they wanted to intervene with acrylic so as to create visual dissonance between editorial texts, images, and audience. In work II, drawing on Jarman’s series Queer (1992), E.K. chose to overlay hostile media coverage with self-representation. E.K. painted over The Telegraph article with a self-portrait as a closeted trans kid in 2010, based on a Facebook photo. Removed from its contexts, Jarman’s political use of ‘queer’ as a slogan could seem reminiscent of 21st century rainbow capitalist merch. E.K. hopes their trans art looks as outdated in 30 years time, when trans rights are mainstreamed and trans*normativity is the object of satire.

EK MYERSON

E.K. Myerson is an artist and cultural critic currently studying at the Royal College of Art. Their interdisciplinary practice responds to conditions of mental, political, archival and bodily collapse, working with text, audio-visual media, collage, acrylic, wax casting, found objects, and stone carving. Their art draws on primary research of medieval and contemporary archives, and reflects their speculative histories of trans*-temporality, tissues, and Arab-Jewish solidarity.
 
E.K. received their PhD in medieval literature from Birkbeck College in 2022, after which they made a shift towards practice-based research. Their essay-film, ‘submerged reliquary of a Kentish saint’, made with artist Sophie Mei Birkin and cinematographer Bartek Dziadosz (produced by the Jarman Lab; funded by Wellcome Trust/Birkbeck ISSF) was premiered at the Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image in 2022. In 2023, E.K. curated the exhibition ‘Anchorless Bodies’ with artist Emii Alrai (Parker Library; funded by an AHRC IAA Grant). Their photography has been published in t’ART magazine, and their writing has appeared in publications including The TLS, The BitterSweet Review, GLQ, postmedieval, and Wasafiri Magazine. E.K.’s first book, The Desire for Syria in Medieval England, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
 


Follow EK on instagram - @ekmyerson

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