Parasitó: an Exhibition by Vedica Art Studios and Gallery

performance by Fina Ferrara

Written by Joas Nebe

Parasitó: an exhibition by Vedica Art Studios and Gallery.

In collaboration with the Consulate of Mexico in Mumbai August 28, 2025 | 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM P. L. Deshpande Maharashtra Kala Academy, Mumbai, India. 

Curator Dorron Britz (UK)

Artists:

Susan Fraser-Hughes (Canada), Barbara Rachko (US), Carol Hartman (US), Joas Nebe (Germany), Justin Menendez (US), Fina Ferrara (Mexico), Rajul Shah (Singapore), Rajan Kapur (India), Arie Otten (Netherlands), Colette Leinman (Israel)

"Parasitó", the Spanish word for parasite, gives the exhibition its name. At the center is the performance by the Mexican performer Fina Ferrara. Fina emerges from a cocoon, pushes her back out, stretches her hands upward, then her head, fully freeing herself, stomping back and forth in the room, dripping with black paint. She reaches for her legs, the long black ones, and uses them to strike the floor, throwing it towards the audience, where the host stands, strumming a pretty harmonious melody on the guitar, while a slurping, slobbing, indefinable soundscape comes from the speakers. Again and again, Ferrara throws her black legs at the audience or smears the wall with her dripping black arms, while Justin Menendez, in a white shirt and lambskin slippers, walks along the edge of the area cordoned off for the performance, his gaze fixed on the parasite, seemingly unaware of any danger. The parasite approaches, pulls back, as if testing how far it can go without expecting resistance. Finally, with loud laughter, Fina throws herself at Justin, grabs him by the shoulder, turns him to the side, and pushes him away.

performance by Fina Ferrara

For curator Dorron Britz, parasitism is not merely an ecological-biological phenomenon, like a tapeworm in the intestine. Rather, Britz sees a metaphysical level where the role of the parasite is fluid and knows no good or evil, thus allowing no real remedy to the infestation. Because if we are all both host and parasite, the categories become blurred.

In addition to the performance, the exhibition includes paintings (Carol Hartman, Rajul Shah, Colette Leinman, Arie Otten), pastel works (Barbara Rachko), drawings (Susan Fraser-Hughes), and collages on vintage photographs (Joas Nebe).

The works of Rajul Shah combine the chakra theory with the Japanese Kintsugi technique, which emphasizes imperfection. Large color fields representing individual energy centers between the physical body and the subtle level are interspersed with bright lines that symbolize the imperfections of our human existence. Perhaps on a meta-level for the parasitic spots.

Carol Hartman's large painting, occupying the front wall of the exhibition space, refers to a near-disaster in Montana, where a freight train loaded with toxic chemicals derailed but fortunately did not spill its toxins into the river, which is crucial for the water supply of the entire region. The toxic orange represents the sulfur compounds that Hartman collected on-site immediately after the accident, while the gray-black may be charred parts of the freight train.

Susan Fraser Hughes presents us with eerie places that she has rendered in coal on Japanese rice paper. Leafless trees rise up. The path that Fraser Hughes positions the viewer on leads into darkness, where all sorts of dangers lurk, perhaps even parasites.

In Colette Leinman's work, we are confronted with a dissected parasite, a parasite that science denies the right to life for the sake of knowledge itself.

Arie Otten, on the other hand, confronts us with his very general heads on DIN A4 paper, whose facial features are present yet refuse to convey readable emotion. Neither seduction nor threat exists here. All that remains is unreadability.

Similarly general is Justin Menendez's video work. Here, it is not the counterpart and their face that is unreadable, but rather, like in Fraser-Hughes's coal drawings, the landscape itself, which is just as deconstructed and reassembled as in Leinman's paintings.

Barbara Rachko's pastels depict Bolivian Carnival masks as images of centuries-old, socially codified parasitic exploitation of both the indigenous people as cheap labor in the mines, and of the environment through the extraction/raubbage of mineral resources.

Finally, there are my works, a series of vintage photographs from the early to mid-20th century, depicting the major milestones of human life: weddings, communions, babies, etc. Although the major rites in Western life are meant to banish the incomprehensibility and parasitic outgrowths of human existence, as has been standardized with the help of images of these rites in photographs since their invention, the unpredictability and vulnerability of the individual to the parasitic within themselves remains. The exploitation of a partner in a relationship. The self-enhancement through the presentation of offspring. To expose this ambivalence, I have glued paper cut-outs onto the photos, so that suddenly the girl in the communion dress has the head of an animal with large round eyes staring at us, and the little boy has a dragon's head, denying the innocent child image its innocence.

artwork by Joas Nebe

Photo credits:

Performance photos: courtesy of Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Photos by Heather Penkala Malmberg

Artwork photos: courtesy by Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, the artists

Exhibition photos: courtesy by Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Joas Nebe

https://www.vedicaartgallery.com