Margarita Athanasiou, DLBLR, Emily Hunt, & Salesforce Child

Here in the heart of capitalist Western Europe, we are taught to achieve fulfillment through our financial potential: that a dream job and a nest egg will set us free. As the political and economic insecurity that we have historically exported to the Global South and East comes knocking on our door, this doctrine of individual optimisation starts to unravel.

Enter the COSMIC GIRLBOSS. She sees systemic crises as spiritual challenges from the universe, asking her to simply manifest material security harder. When she is let go from her job, rather than, say, unionising, she charges her crystals and asks her Tarot deck to point her in the right direction. She is an entrepreneur of the divine.

This exhibition assembles artists who playfully and lovingly examine gendered spiritual entrepreneurialism and its historical, political, and technological contexts. Emily Hunt offers us talismans for navigating neoliberal systems, as well as allowing the GIRLBOSS to truly touch the great mystery of the cosmos. The artist duo DLBLR subvert and reclaim the cultural appropriation and commodification of spiritual practices in pop culture. Salesforce Child crafts a new religion out of the horrors of the smartphone screen and the naked, frenzied worship of pure capital it enables. Margarita Athanasiou gives a fantastical, historical perspective on the relationship between fascism, the occult, and the Internet.

The COSMIC GIRLBOSS’ spiritual entrepreneurialism is especially well-suited to digital platform economies such as TikTok and Instagram. For-pay Tarot readings and algorithmically determined astrological horoscopes abound, often marketed to women and queer people. The term ‘GIRLBOSS’ is itself a sexist product of the 2010s Internet, describing female entrepreneurs who cloaked their hypercapitalist ambitions in a sheen of peppy feminism. The archetypical GIRLBOSS does not need to be a woman, and she is very rarely actually a boss, but her endless quest for money is defined by a gendered financial precarity.

This exhibition acknowledges the power of the COSMIC GIRLBOSS, and how her spiritual strategies help cope with the volatility of our crumbling economic systems, while also gently insisting that there must be more to her, and our, contemporary spiritual life.

Accompanying programme

Über die Künstler*innen

Margarita Athanasiou is an artist and organiser based in Athens, Greece. Her practice is text-based, utilises collage techniques and brings together autobiography and history to create multi-layered narratives in the form of publications, video essays, prints, memes and digital images.

DLBLR (Delaine Le Bas & Lászl ó Farkas)

Delaine Le Bas was born in Worthing, U.K, in 1965. She studied at St Martins School Of Art London. Delaine is a cross disciplinary artist creating installations, performance, photography and film. Her works focus on issues of identity, race, gender, sexuality and the continued violence and exclusions against whoever is perceived as “the other” within society.

László Farkas aka Lazlorrobot Homorrobot is a media worker, Jumping Fitness Trainer, DJ and queer Roma activist. Former organizer of the Roma LGBTQI floats at Budapest Pride and Berlin Queer Pride. Founder, technical assistant and editor of several Roma, queer and sex worker community related art and media projects

Emily Hunt‘s artistic practice critically engages with the historical and cultural significance of ornament, magical practice, and grotesque imagery as vehicles for subversion and transgression. Her ongoing research focuses on Renaissance print media, specifically the period’s occult philosophy and the archetype of the witch as portrayed in Renaissance print culture.

Salesforce Child‘s (Summer Emerald) work speaks in an idiosyncratic yet immediately recognizable blend of corporate and devotional language across painting, video, performance, writing, drawing, and social media The work reflects the semiotic chaos of contemporary systems, imbued with the sense that what we have built is leaving us behind.

Team & Unterstützung

Curation: Frances Breden

Exhibition Design & Production: Carolina Redondo

Curatorial Assistance: Fenia Franz

Project Assistance: Paulina Afonina

Visual Identity: Polina Zagumenova

Exhibition Install Team: Ignacia Carramiñana (wood constructions), Ximena Musalem, Cote Jaña

Exhibition Install Helpers: Alvaro Bezanilla, Andrés Bucci, Hassan Elmalik

German Sign Language Text: Dana Cermane

Braille Text: Medienzentrum Zeune-Schule

Support: Stéphane Bauer, Carlotta Gonindard Liebe, Dani Hasrouni, & Sofía Pfister

Invigilators: Hassan Elmalik, Daniela Schoepe & Team

The Galerie im Turm is run by the municipal government of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. This project is supported by the Berlin Senate Fund for Presenting Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Fund for Communal Galleries, and the Fund for Exhibition Honorariums for Visual Artists.

Accessibility

All videos have English and German subtitles.

There is a musical artwork with printed out lyrics to read.

There are reading materials in English and German.

There is information about the exhibition in German Sign Language, German plain language, and German Braille in the space.

One video is only available via a staircase on alternating Tuesdays (14 & 28 April, 5 May) and Saturdays (4 & 25 April, 2 & 16 May) at 5 pm. If you are unable to use the stairs, the invigilator can provide a version of the video on a tablet upon request.

More information on the gallery’s accessibility can be found on our About Us webpage.

COSMIC GIRLBOSS