Life, Death, Life 

Curation by Katya Austin

First there was the word and then there was the end of the wholeness of the world.

All is separate, says man, and his word,

Death of the whole birth of the individual soul.

5,000 years ago the written word appeared. 

One of the first stories ever recorded is the myth of Inanna. The story of the planet Venus.

Inanna is dual in nature. The evening and the morning star. Thought to be two separate entities, the masculine and the feminine. Morning is for war and evening is for love.

But she is one. She is whole.

Venus sits as the evening star, presiding over her realm of love and fertility. Although she is no mother goddess, in fact she’s known as being “tempermentally indisposed” to those kinds of functions. She sits in this position for 9 months, until it is time for her to dress herself with her holy adornments. Her crown, robes, jewels, and sword. Fully adorned she enters her retrograde, moving closer and closer to the sun until she is essentially engulfed; it is impossible to see her in the night sky. This disappearance marks the beginning of her descent, her entrance into the underworld. For seven days her place as the brightest star in the sky is replaced with void. For these seven days she descends through the underworld.

Amos Jin’s Six, 2025 sets the scene in the realm of heaven. The kingdom of light. The beautiful light and the tension of the form.

M. Gloxinia Lyra’s Tenfold, 2026 is an exploration of the internal landscape of the depths of the psyche. The dark places we are scared to confront and yet that which holds a deep and vast expanse of information. A place one voyages into and comes out changed, holding tenfold treasures.

Emerald Whipple Rose’s portrait of Samantha, 2014 represents the nakedness Inanna faces in the depth of the underworld. Stripped of her adornments, but nonetheless in her full power. Engulfed by the sun.

Chloe Chan’s Moon Goddess Temple, 2026 is an altar to death and life. Taking motifs from her Chinese heritage, paying homage to her dead ancestors, adorning paper mache idols with her living inspirations. Her mother and her artistic muses. Surrounded by her handmade keychains, embracing the act of craft as an alchemical processing of her own identity.

Plato Lovelace’s Virtuousus Realitas Mirari, 2026 offers a moment of reflection. The opportunity to gaze into the silicon that has come to define our modern age. A portal from the physical into the virtual form. The space that we have come to create as a manifestation of our chosen identities. Adorned by lace in reference to the relationship between weaving and computation. Both originally seen as women’s work but worthy of respect as pillars of our reality.

Rubeen Salem’s Are You Excited Yet, 2026 is an homage to the divine feminine form. The feminine that exists within both women and men. An idealized figure. A femininity that is integrated with the masculine.

All of these pieces represent a moment along the voyage of the heroine’s journey. Unlike the hero’s journey which is external, about going on a quest, defeating one’s demons, and returning home. The heroine’s journey is an internal experience, a voyage into the psyche, a stripping of the ego, and an intentional ascent back into the world as a changed person who has truly faced themselves.