Endless Repetition of the Same

Jesika Joy

A Space Windows

November 18 – December 17, 2016

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Nietzsche contends that the standard for a life well-lived is that we would gladly experience it exactly the same, with all its pleasures and pains, again and again for eternity. The problem, according to Freud, is that we have no control. We are unconsciously compelled to repeat damaging patterns in a negation of life. The pieces here speak to these eternal returns. In Endless Repetition of the Same (2016) we witness three reenactments of the same scene, each delivering a similar affective resonance but with minor variations in brush stroke and tone. In Urine Fountain (2013) we are drawn to the meditative filling of glasses only to find them empty and ready to be filled again. Both works, it seems, promise that things might finally be different this time, that the present forecasts a celebratory future. But that future does not come. Nowhere is this more apparent then in our intimate attachments. 

Urine Fountain (2013) was made at the Luminous Bodies Artist Residency

Biographies

Jesika Joy is a multimedia artist focused on questions of gender, sexuality and subjectivity. Her influences include feminist performance art, feminist painting, continental philosophy, and contemporary leftist theory. She holds a PhD in Social and Political Thought and has exhibited her video works at festivals across Canada as well as internationally in Berlin, Atlanta, London, Boston, Paris, and New York.