Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
(Auguries of Innocence, William Blake)
MEGA Foundation is delighted to present Sally von Rosen’s first solo exhibition Auguries of Innocence, in Stockholm, Sweden. In spiritual essence with William Blake’s eponymous poem from 1863, the exhibition deals with the cradle of life, a looming omen from what is not yet, but imaginably will be.
Twisting words and movements with rhythm and cadency is significant for Sally von Rosen’s bodily practice that includes sculpture and performance, often intimately activated in conversation with the viewing participant. Usually in a heightened state, von Rosen’s sculptures are awoken and embody an emotional quality that aims to blur the idea of a physical innate object and rather hopes to move into the area of the possibly unknown, ideas following Jane Bennet’s scholarly contribution, Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things) from 2010.
For this exhibition the gallery visitor is invited to walk through the gallery veil, into a cave-like room, where von Rosen has given birth to two new creatures, Omen (2023) and Nemo (2023). Having just crept their way through the soil, you find them in this initial moment of fickle innocence, one that is but a fleeting stage in time and one that inevitably perishes within the human experience of life.
Maria Elena Guerra Aredal