Every You Every Me

Ever since recently re-noticing Placebo quoting the Victorian-era wedding rhyme in their 1999 classic, “Every You Every Me,” I’ve been thinking about the poetry and sensibility captured in "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue". So, learning that this is the title of Autumn Wallace’s solo show at Josh Lilley Gallery, its humble symbolism definitely changed how I initially experienced these works. For me, it shifted the dominant '90s cartoons/comics appeal, which I first saw in her debut during my last visit back in spring of 2024, into something more profound, timeless, almost Baroquesque.

The work shows bodily endurance and raw, almost breakdancing-like energy; the elegance (and endurance) of ballerinas; the fragility of puppetry; the candidness of a diary entry; and the bluntness of caricature. All of it is constructed through a painterly technique that ranges from blueprint-like drafts and comic illustration to expressive painterly passages, or through DIY-like craftsmanship encompassing sawing, embroidery, clay or foam sculpting, and an abundance of materials, fabrics, and gemstones. With these, Wallace cleverly builds absurdity to strip the truth of its artificial attachments, leaving it bare to stand on its own. And for an artist whose practice “examines myth, gender, sexuality and the Black-femme experience,” this approach makes a huge difference both visually and conceptually. 

But Wallace isn’t taking such an approach to mock. Instead, she’s audaciously working w excess, fluidity, and perspective shifts, putting the viewer in a voyeuristic position, and pushing things into the territory of empathy and compassion. “I tend towards ridicule—the most shameful and ugly parts of being, bodies, and sexuality. Squishing, cinching, folding, wrinkling, sag, sweat, drool. I relish in the act of taking the “ugliest” features of bodies and behaviors, exaggerating them in ways they become beautiful for the same reasons they have been deemed revolting,” she explained where this shift is coming from. —Saša Bogojev