Ginevra Shay

A Big Toe Touches A Green Tomato
Roxana Azar and Ginevra Shay
Resort Baltimore

January 20–March 11, 2018

Resort is pleased to present its inaugural exhibition, “A Big Toe Touches A Green Tomato,” featuring the work of Roxana Azar and Ginevra Shay.

These artists use photography, sculpture and ceramics to depict poetic moments of observation and adaptation. Both artists use dystopian backdrops of collapsing dominant structures to point out not just the flaws of these systems, but to highlight alternative, minor modes of persistence.

It is worth noting that Azar and Shay are close friends. The subjects of their work vary greatly, ranging from modernist architecture and speculative science-fiction, to geology and cinematic slapstick. However, when their work is viewed together, the body becomes their shared point of dialogue. In their work, bodies are acknowledged as permeable and vulnerable, while striving to retain autonomy. The body and its environment are forever acting on one another; Azar and Shay re-envision these interactions, folding together bodies, plants, minerals, and space to discover alternative trajectories.

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A meandering stroll from a gesture to a joke, to a plant, and around a building does not diminish the essential complexity of the world. It’s a search for tiny luminous traces; a golden dandelion basking in the burning sun, putting faith in the perseverance of what seems most doomed to perish. You can pursue lightness, without disavowing the importance of the weight of living—invent strategies for cultivation.

In an apocalyptic world slow movement through space is not a refusal of a direct approach—it is counterpoint to catastrophe. A pause to gaze out the window and thank the moon for a very particular shade of dark blue, only to catch a hot and slow moving green. Have you ever seen the same colors as opposites? The meteor was the opposite green of a weeping pine. I would’ve missed it if I wasn’t fixing my broken window.

In utter dissatisfaction with the world one needs to remove the plaque, clear the overgrowth, to make way for light to reach the bottom. When growing, a trellis or a cage for support is best. When fruit forms it can become rather top heavy. Yellow flowers, nightshade. Bloodmeal for nutrition. Give them space and some companions, like marigolds, sage, nasturtium. Companions work together to keep away pests, balance the soil. 94% of its weight is water. Thirsty birds peck at them on hot summer days when they aren’t near a water source. In the garden, we accidentally created a hybrid when propagating seeds for the next season. The fruit was bell shaped, like the first fruit, but the color was a yellowy-orange into dark pink gradient like the second fruit. Unripe fruit may contain a small amount of toxic alkaloids which are more concentrated in the stems and the leaves—these alkaloids are a defense.

Here heaviness dissolves—a big toe touches a green tomato.