Why do we love to predict? Inside 'Clairvoyant' at Ceysson-Bénétière New York

Is it only me or is everyone’s social media filled with spiritual videos lately? I used to laugh at them. At first, they sounded a bit outdated, but, after some time, I started to agree. Are women intuitive? Obviously! Do men feed off our energy? No comment. I started to think that these online sorcerers were ahead of their time, on a sixth wave of feminism. In contrast, the art world is floundering behind, failing to reach the realities of the zeitgeist. Nothing new here: successful male artists continue to use their power to become more successful through harassment, gaslighting, and whatever—albeit while claiming to be “pro-feminist.”

This fall, power dynamics are changing at the New York outpost of the French gallery Ceysson-Bénétière. There, an all-women exhibition Clairvoyant opens on September 12, curated by the fiercely feminist and provocative Swedish-Guyanese New York curator, editor-in-chief, and publicist Anna Mikaela Ekstrand. The managing team of the gallery are curators themselves and therefore are focused not only on commercialization but on carrying meaningful messages to the public.

Although the exhibition title literally means “seeing clearly” most of the works are non-figurative and formally obscure. To tap in, the viewer must become a little bit of a clairvoyant too. “The work is designed to intrigue and seduce at first glance, but when you look closer, you'll find more questions than answers, hidden meanings, and subtle warnings,” says Katya Grokhovsky, a Ukrainian-born artist whose alluring paintings in the exhibition are discretely poignant. She continues: “The longer you look, the more you discover.”

The celebrity of the show is ORLAN — a French neo-. post-, and alter-feminist artist, pioneer of carnal art, and one of the first artists to use her own body as a medium by undergoing a series of surgeries from 1986 to 1993. Not to look more conventionally pretty, on the contrary, —to not fit in. Her name is written in all capitalised letters for the same reason: ORLAN is against being categorised.

“Women are always in the shadows, discrete, they do not speak out loud and clear. Writing in capitals for a woman is getting noticed. It is coming out of shyness. It is coming out of the shadows.” — ORLAN writes in ALL CAPITALS to Vogue Scandinavia. The exhibition presents one of her early works, a print from 1967 Corps-sculpture sans visage en mouvement dansant avec son ombre capturing a faceless body dancing with its shadow.

Ekstrand, the curator, is enraptured by the stories of ignored voices. “As we continue to strive towards fully functioning matriarchy (or at the very least gender equity) it is crucial to share experiences," Ekstrand comments.

“I don’t want to believe, I want to know,” replies ORLAN when I ask her what she believes in. “I am for the eradication of all religions because they are made by men for men to maintain patriarchy and misogyny. They divide people. They create communities that are each sure of holding the truth and this creates wars.” I could not agree more.

My female friends are welcoming when I ask them about their time of birth (a simple question, duh!) but men, in most cases, respond with an eye-roll. From grandmothers’ superstitions and birth charts to contemporary TikTok feeds, spirituality – like fashion – creates a safe space for women. I am curious if the tendency to keep spirituality within the women's circle is connected to the desire to fight back against the institutionalised religious agenda.

A curator reimagining an exhibition in a fashion publication feels fresh and is a unique way to let creative minds meet. “This project is incredibly exciting – like a long-held wet teenage dream coming true. I think fashion and art intersect seamlessly in my bathroom shoot, where I wear a sculptural dress by the designer and sculptor Caroline Zimbalist. As an artist who usually works independently, being part of a larger body is truly special,” comments New York-based Swedish artist Anna Ting Möller, who is featured in both the exhibition and the editorial. It is shot by the Swedish photographer Elsa Hammarén who recently moved to New York City. On her wardrobe, Ekstrand comments: “I adore AVAVAV’s odd silhouettes that allow the wearer to be unshapely in a good way and the sculptural elements on Emelie Janrell’s gown from her new goddess-inspired collection are the result of the designer’s material experimentation. I wanted the wardrobe to reflect sartorial daring and that fashion truly is art.” Ekstrand met Beate Karlsson – who revived the label AVAVAV – some years back, while she was enrolled at Parsons School of Design in New York.

In addition to being the founding editor-in-chief of the cutting-edge ten-year-old magazine and PR agency Cultbytes, Ekstrand is the associate director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB), a large-scale exhibition representing immigrant artists in the USA. Among others, “Clairvoyant” presents five artists involved in TIAB: the abovementioned Katya Grokhovsky, who is its founding director, the inventive Swedish sculptors Anna Ting Möller and Linnéa Gad and poetic Japanese interdisciplinary artist Hanae Utamura who were featured artists as well as Bianca Abdi-Boragi, a French-Algerian and American artist whose gorgeous fanciful sculptures engage with domesticity. Together with Ekstrand, Abdi-Boragi co-curated the 2023 biennial edition, which presented more than fifty artists across nine New York and New Jersey venues, including the Brooklyn Museum. Ekstrand shares: “We created a sense of belonging by bringing their narratives to the public.”

One of the few works on view in Clairvoyant with a clear figurative image is the video Her Love is a Bleeding Tank created by Chinese artist Yasmine Anlan Huang. The video, first on view at the 2024 Whitney Biennial, captures a close-up of an unblinking eye with a reflection of a white figure dancing in it. The video is overlaid with a poetic childhood memory telling a story of accepting unrequited love. The work is about seeing, remembering, and re-accepting the past.

Clairvoyance is all jokes and fun until it is not. Three years ago, I called a tarot card reader to ask silly questions like the whereabouts of my next boyfriend. Instead, she predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine and half a year later it came true. The rational part of me says that we all knew it was coming, but since then I have not called her. I prefer to enjoy the beauty of life without spoilers. Clairvoyance is not guessing what happens in the future, rather it is the courage to admit the present. It takes strength to see the truth clearly without avoidance. And, it takes strength to be able to accept the future, whatever it is.

The exhibition Clairvoyant curated by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand features Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Yasmine Anlan Huang, Ayana Evans, Linnéa Gad, Katya Grokhovsky, Katie Hubbell, Anna Ting Möller, ORLAN, and Hanae Utamura runs from September 12th to October 19th, 2024 at Ceysson-Bénétière New York.