Art Metropole

#13744

Infecting Postal (set of 4)

Price

$20.00

Date

2018

Publisher

Andrew Zealley

Format

Multiples

Size

11 × 16 cm

Genre

Postcard

Infecting Postal is a new series of four numbered postcards, each in an edition of 100.
Infecting Postal expands on Zealley’s previous text-based explorations, including the panels Say “Ah.”, Sex. Ritual. Purpose, and Burn to be your Unicorn (2012-2013), and the large-format plaque works, Infecting Mbembe (2015). In Infecting Postal, Zealley combines his interest in mail art histories with theory and methodological readings in his doctorate studies. Select citations are infected with language from the field of HIV/AIDS with the goal of expanding our understanding of the ways AIDS infects/affects everyone, and the multiple, insidious forms— physical, emotional, psychic, social, political, aesthetic—that infection can take. Moreover, the postcards present a pragmatic method for the artist to dig into, or “get under the skin,” of each text to interrogate the links and possible meanings that might (or might not) relate to health, gender, race, age, class, and ableism in the era of AIDS industrialization. Infecting Postal offers sobering messages of the current state of the pandemic in the absence of a cure.

The four texts infected in this series include:
• The Promise of Happiness by Sarah Ahmed (Duke University Press, 2010)
• Postproduction: Culture As Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World by Nicolas Bourriaud (Lukas & Sternberg, 2002)
• Art Beyond Itself: Anthropology for a Society Without a Storyline by Néstor Garcia Canclini (Duke University Press, 2014)
• Brilliant Imperfections: Grappling With Cure by Eli Clare (Duke University Press, 2017)

Zealley’s fascination with scholarly practice, as it relates to writing, annotation, and bibliography practices, first surfaced with his panels Say “Ah.” and Sex. Ritual. Purpose. The former was included in a group exhibiti0n at The Gladstone Hotel (2012), and both were featured in his MFA thesis exhibition, Disco Hospital: Safe and Sound (OCAD University, 2013). The five plaque-mounted panels, Infecting Mbembe, were first exhibited at The Gladstone Hotel as part of TSG: Falling to Pieces (curated by Syrus Marcus Ware) in 2015. This controversial body of work also appeared, as a creative intervention, in Studies in Social Justice, 11(2)

Infecting Postal postcards are available individually as well as in sleeved sets of four.

Individual cards (#34-100) are priced at $5 each.
Sets of four (#1-33) are $20.