Inanimate
“Inanimate objects, do you have a soul that attaches to our soul and strength to love?”
– Alphonse de Lamartine, Harmonies poétiques et religieuses.
In 14th-century Florentine Italy, the lifelike emergence of wax sculptures provoked an erotic panic. With their fleshy tones, human hair, and clothing, these figures blurred the lines between life and objecthood. They were kissed, feared, worshipped – interacted with as if alive. This visceral unease touched theology and philosophy – inciting a panic rooted in man playing God, daring to sculpt not just likeness but life itself. Today, we find ourselves facing a similar panic. But the uncanny now arises not from wax, but from data – more specifically data in the flesh – the in-animate coded animate, born and bred in human-generated data points.
Inanimate opens at Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton from July 26 to 27th, 2025. With works from artists Poppy Cauchi, Annie Edwards, Vanessa Amoah Opoku, Neusa Trovoada, Siyang Wang, Pin-Yu Wu, and Kate Youme, sound performances, and a workshop led by Liv Owens – this exhibition examines our increasingly entangled relationship with technology as it relates to sexual companionship, friendship, healing, mediation, tracking, imitation, and mirroring. Stretching and destabilizing each corner of meaning, Inanimate asks how intimacy might evolve and be reimagined… offering a moment to reflect on the future before it imposes itself upon us.
