REVIEW: Sula Bermùdez-Silverman Murmurs

by Angela Groom

Sula Bermúdez Silverman, Carrefour Pietà / Be My Victim, 2021, courtesy Murmurs.

Sula Bermùdez-Silverman’s solo exhibition “Sighs and Leers and Crocodile Tears,” at first seems to be a curious series of clichés, but a story begins to unfold—through Silverman’s attention to detail— about the history of power, erasure, hierarchy and otherness that has been built into the very fabric of culture. Silverman seeks to expose the role of toxic masculinity, racism and colonialism in American culture by observing its various monsters throughout cinema. The body of work is a spectacle of elegant nostalgia that begs the viewer to question the true history, emptiness and destruction of imperialism; all the while, showing that the roads of terror point to a drive for power, a core tenet of toxic masculinity. A beautiful large tapestry, titled Carrefour Pietà / Be My Victim (2021) serves as a spectacular centerpiece where all the other elements within the show rise and converge. It portrays a still from the 1943 classic film, I Walked With A Zombie (directed by Jacques Tourneur), paneled alongside a depiction of Michelangelo’s Pieta; the Virgin Mary holding Jesus. Here, the artist has employed the juxtaposition of light and dark in a symbiotic way; a Black man/zombie/monster carrying a white femme between images of Mother Mary holding Black Jesus.

Sula Bermúdez Silverman, Carrefour Pietà / Be My Victim, 2021, courtesy Murmurs.

The first room to the right of the main gallery floor is lined with small resin wall reliefs resembling ornate windows that expose rooms, each filled with a different classic horror trope. Michael Jackson’s famous zombie-look from the music video Thriller, is seen in Porthole 1 (Proteus) (2020) and in Porthole 7 (Death and the Maiden) (2021), where Death is a Black figure carrying a white woman. In the main gallery, another tapestry hangs on the wall of the bride of Frankenstein, titled The Monster’s Bride (She’s Alive!) (2020) directly to the right. Three kitschy cookie-cutter dollhouses, titled “Repository I-III” (all 2021) made of isomalt sugar and epoxy resin sit atop illuminated bricks of Himalayan pink salt in the center of the gallery. Glowing resin claws litter the corners of the room in zombie fashion, as if menacingly coming up from below. Turning Heel (2021), Lady With The Ring (2021) and Satan Arousing The Rebel Angels (2021) show the talons outstretched from beds of salt with found objects surrounding them. In some cases it’s a jar, a puffer fish specimen or carpenter bees. The use of light and epoxy resin seems reminiscent of the late Mike Kelley’s body of work—“Kandors” (2005–09) specifically, with its use of low lighting and glowing sculptures—that take iconography from pop culture to transport the viewer into a space of unflinching truth, beauty, memory, sadness and terror.