'Making Kin' : Studio West Gallery, Notting Hill

14 March - 11 April 2024
Inspired by multispecies feminist theorist Donna Haraway’s book, ‘Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene’ (2016), the exhibition brings together practices which utilise storytelling to explore ways of reimagining humanity’s relationship with the earth and its inhabitants.

STUDIO WEST is proud to present MAKING KIN, a group exhibition featuring predominantly new paintings by five female artists: Imogen AllenOlha PryymakYuma RadnéPaula Turmina and Freya Fang Wang, alongside photographic prints and research materials by Plantaphilia (a collaboration between PhD student Iria Suárez Martínez and artist Paula Turmina).

Inspired by multispecies feminist theorist Donna Haraway’s book, ‘Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene’ (2016), the exhibition brings together practices which utilise storytelling to explore ways of reimagining humanity’s relationship with the earth and its inhabitants. Taking up Haraway’s invitation to “stay with the trouble” by “making oddkin”, these artists draw on their experiences of post-colonial, indigenous, herbalist and rural contexts to envisage alternative ways of living together on a damaged earth. From hopeful narratives of symbiotic flourishing, to visions of post-apocalyptic survival, the works on show invite viewers to recognise the power of speculative-fiction in carving out routes to alternative futures besides global ecological devastation.