Nothing Under Heaven
Nothing Under Heaven marks Joseph Liatela's inaugural solo museum exhibition, assembling new commissions and recent works exploring the pursuit of connection, pleasure, and agency within oppressive systems. Exhibited alongside photography by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and religious art by Carlo Dolci (1616-1686) from the University Galleries’ collection, Liatela invokes a range of stories to assess what it means to move together, remember together, and repair together.
Liatela correlates spaces of communal experience – churches, medical institutions, and clubs – where promises of salvation and healing intersect with loss and grief. By uniting these different spaces through a range of mediums and interdisciplinary analysis, Liatela reveals how these disparate environments hold similar contradictions that impact the way we perceive ourselves and each other. Within the exhibition, Liatela intertwines the search for absolution in a church, the potential for healing through medical care, and the liberating escapism found on the dancefloor. Furthermore, Liatela also unites ideologies of the afterlife – the veneration of patron saints, possibilities of dancing with the memories of loved ones, and the lingering presence of mortality in hospitals, underscoring both their similarities and distinctions.
Liatela correlates spaces of communal experience – churches, medical institutions, and clubs – where promises of salvation and healing intersect with loss and grief. By uniting these different spaces through a range of mediums and interdisciplinary analysis, Liatela reveals how these disparate environments hold similar contradictions that impact the way we perceive ourselves and each other. Within the exhibition, Liatela intertwines the search for absolution in a church, the potential for healing through medical care, and the liberating escapism found on the dancefloor. Furthermore, Liatela also unites ideologies of the afterlife – the veneration of patron saints, possibilities of dancing with the memories of loved ones, and the lingering presence of mortality in hospitals, underscoring both their similarities and distinctions.