Roodkapje is Rotterdam’s local laboratory for
ART X MUSIC X FOOD and everything in between

Delftseplein 39
3013 AA Rotterdam

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Tue-Sat 12:00 – 17:00

Roodkapje is Rotterdam's local laboratory for
ART X LIVE X FOOD and everything in between

8 January 2023 - 12 February 2023

EXHIBITION | ‘DESCENDING NOTES/LIKE RAIN IN THE ABYSS’ by Lou Lou Sainsbury

EXHIBITION | 'DESCENDING NOTES/LIKE RAIN IN THE ABYSS' by Lou Lou Sainsbury.

An erotic cosmic love story between three transing beings whose desire unfolds across time and space.
Featuring collaborations with Gabi Dao, Raffia Li & Ada M. Patterson.

Exhibition Opening: January 7th 17.00 - 22.00
Exhibition Dates: 8th January - 12th February

“Fowelley are you leaking?”

DESCENDING NOTES/LIKE RAIN IN THE ABYSS is a new solo exhibition by Lou Lou Sainsbury, expanding on her Freelands Gasworks Partnership Programme film commission descending notes (2022).

Comprising video installation, sound sculpture, scent, poetry and drawing, Lou Lou Sainsbury presents an expanded remix of her erotic science-fiction film descending notes (2022). Exploring transness as a form of resonance, the installation takes its inspiration from Donny Hathaway’s heartfelt rendition of A Song for You, whose lyrics are punctuated by a discordant progression of piano notes: “If my words don’t come together, listen to the melody ‘cause my love is in there hiding… I love you in a place where there's no space or time.”

Written and performed with Ada M. Patterson and Raffia Li, the film is a cosmic love story between three transing beings whose desire unfolds across time and space, from the sensuality of early Christian sainthoods to future alien intimacies. Scattered with off-cuts, poetry and sonic elements, the installation is permeated by ‘Fowelley’s Scent’, a newly-commissioned collaboration with the artist Gabi Dao & PPLS Perfume. Based on the pollinating erotics of the film, the desirous scent of the more-than-human saint lingers as trans atmosphere, an alien transmission of troubled entanglements within mist, wet forests, sea air, acid rain and engine exhaust. A cloud that bites, just delicious.

Grounded in autobiographical experiences of tenderness, solidarity and grief within Sainsbury’s friendships and everyday life; DESCENDING NOTES/LIKE RAIN IN THE ABYSS remixes a sensual poetics for after the end of the world when the body has no end. As the world splits apart, these undercover beings covertly learn to live in transformation and to give each other breath.

descending notes was initially commissioned by Gasworks, with generous support from the Freelands Foundation.

ABOUT LOU LOU SAINSBURY

Lou Lou Sainsbury (she/they) is a trans artist based in Margate, UK & Rotterdam, NL, working across film and live-performance, poetry and drawing, installation and textiles. She identifies as a time traveller, making things that unwrite histories of living beings into tricksterish dreamscapes, informed by queer & ecological activisms. She often works in collaboration, developing intimate long term research-led projects guided by improvisation, cinematic processes and sonic thinking.

Lou Lou’s work explores trans-sensual poetics, questioning how we can become better listeners and how to trouble historicity and geography. Recently her work maps a constellation of saints, holes, mist, vampirism, aliens, hauntings, musicality and elemental passions, writing slippery narratives in the realms of science-fiction and gothic-horror.

Lou Lou graduated from the MA in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute in 2021, and was awarded Freelands Gasworks Partnership Programme. Previously she was an associate artist at Open School East in 2017, after completing her BA in Moving Image at the University of Brighton in 2016.

She has exhibited individually at Gasworks, London; Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2022) and Well Projects, Margate (2020). Recent performances and group exhibitions include: Motto Books, Berlin and Whitstable Biennale (2022); Centre for Contemporary Arts, Prague (2021); Yaby and La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2020); Tate Modern, London; Nottingham Contemporary; Yaby, Madrid (all 2019) and Flat Time House (2018).

www.loulousainsbury.com
https://www.instagram.com/loulousainsbury/