What do disembodied tongues stacked on a pike, an ASMR-whisper story of a date with an octopus girl and edible installation have in common? At first glance, perhaps, not much - pulled out of their contexts, they seem entirely unrelated. Yet, these curious artworks, alongside other equally unconventional and experimental pieces, come together in the inter-disciplinary, multifaceted exhibition Honeyed Violence at FILET.
Installation shot courtesy of Emma Yifan Wang
The show’s curator, Emma Yifan Wang, describes the titular term of ‘honeyed violence’ - a term coined by film critic Raymond Bellour - as the allure and seduction of certain experiences or objects that fascinate us, yet innately come with hidden discomfort, the unsettling tension. "These mesmerising phenomena," Wang explains, "are like enchanted whirlpools, that slowly and unknowingly draw us in; capturing our attention and prompting emotional investment while concealing their disquieting undercurrents." Since the late 20th century, the fervour surrounding the inclusion of films in exhibition spaces has vividly exemplified this dynamic. As a Video Art scholar and writer Erika Balsom notes in her article revisiting the landmark exhibition Passage de l’image, held at the Centre Pompidou in 1996, viewers often found the experience of watching films in contemporary art spaces uncomfortable due to its unfamiliarity—standing or shifting between multiple screens, rather than sitting before a single one, as in a traditional cinema theatre. Yet, despite this discomfort, audiences remained captivated.
Exploring this tension between tenderness and harm, the group show took place at FILET, a London space for an experimental art production directed by Rut Blees Luxemburg and Uta Kogelberger, and featured works by Sara Christova, Phillips Reeves, Dangquin Xu, Emma Black, Attiyyah Rahman, Laaraa, Harry Clinch and Yuchen Li, who co-curated it.
Installation shots courtesy of Emma Yifan Wang
Coming from Changsha, China, with a background in designing intricate systems, Yuchen Li initially turned to art to express the complex and unexplainable aspects of our relationship with the world. Her 5 minute-long sonic sonic story, The octopus girl, her suckers, and the gifted egg (2024), is one of curiosity, longing and the confusion of tangled desires, told in an asmr-like whisper and presented in a form of a pair of black minimalistic over-ear headphones and audio player besides. Based on a dream she once had, Li taps into subconscious and follows the story of the narrator meeting the octopus girl at a gig. The whole surreal encounter seems to embody Freud’s concept of the uncanny: the familiar, eerily human-like behaviour, as the octopus girl expresses her interest in a date and shares the tea, is made strange by her alien-like appearance - tentacle, slimy skin and distorted voice, as if coming from under the water - the two blend together to create an unsettling experience, straying away from what the narrator expects of a romantic encounter. The story comes to its climactic moment, when the octopus girl offers the narrator her egg as a gift for agreeing to date her. This usually simple act of gift-giving becomes laced with discomfort, as the egg with its translucent skin, evoke an unsettling sense of otherness, forcing the listener to navigate the strangeness of the act and the uncanny tension between recognisable and alien.
Such captivating, almost violent obsession with the pervasive, extends beyond contemporary art spaces: from a psychoanalytic perspective, what fascinates or obsesses us often reflects an unconscious lack, an unfulfilled desire. In Hold Your Tongue, 2024 London-based sculptor and installation artist Emma Black explores human experience from a non-normative perspective, investigates the internal and external pressure of self-censorship; particularly within the context of anxiety and neurodiversity. Often drawing from personal lived experience, their practice addressed feeling of otherness through fragmented representations of the body, using objects laden with personal and collective associations to evoke unexpected connections: glazed ceramic tongues impaled on a threateningly sharp metal spike evoke a fascinating interplay between materiality and metaphor, addressing the internal violence of censoring oneself and societal expectations contrasted with the need for human connection.
Lacan proposed multiple readings of identity formation through desire, which is fundamentally rooted in lack, and the importance of the Other - the social and cultural influences that shape it. In his 1966 work Écrits, he pushes the concept further and introduces the ‘mirror stage’: the idea that the identity is formed through misrecognition.
Taking a more literal approach to the word ‘stage’ in that collocation, the ‘mirror stage’ is materialised here via an interactive food art performance by Giuseppe Burdo from Maisongb, Food Bites, which coincided with the show’s finissage. The ‘bites’ of diverse textures from smooth to rough to sticky (the swirl of barbie-pink puree, spread in a circular motion, hardened puddle of dark chocolate, tiny sphere-shaped cupcakes) were scattered on a reflective, mirror-like surface in the geometric, sculptural fashion. The mirror surface itself created a sense of doubling and abstraction, further emphasising this spatial element of arrangement, with the repetitive elements adding a rhythm to the overall composition.
Installation shots courtesy of Emma Yifan Wang
Yet, despite the clear conceptuality, departing from a traditional food presentation, the self-proclaimed chaos dealer embraced the exhibition’s experimental approach and encouraged visitors to interact with it - to try, play, taste, share, explore and indulge. Lucky to be one of the participants, I’m glad to report that this quasi-sensory experience felt truly surreal: the visual and the tactile mixed in with an unconventional approach to taste, rich dark chocolate revealed the spicy chilli notes that lingered in the throat, and the pimply cupcakes halved when taken. Just like in A.K. Blakemore’s The Glutton, the emphasis shifted from just a physical act of eating to an aesthetic and ritualised obsession. The meticulous arrangement and sensory overload transformed the food into something more than a mere substance, reflecting themes of desire, lack and indulgence all the way through.
Installation shot courtesy of Emma Yifan Wang
Ultimately, Honeyed Violence comes together in a deliciously unsettling interplay of discomfort and desire, creating a rich tapestry of artistic exploration to remind us all that the allure of uncanny often lingers just beneath the surface. In a world where desire and discomfort entwine, isn’t it the pursuit of honeyed violence that makes the experience truly memorable?
