SHOW: EXHIBITION 

Wishful Thinking by Siahne Rogers

‘Wishful Thinking’ explores the affectual embodiment and disembodiment of Hope, of tossing the coin and making a wish. Curious to understand the slippage of hopefulness and hopelessness, Siahne walked around New York for three months making wishes, the only rule being it had to be connected to a body of water; the entry point to wishful thinking. Next thing Siahne knew, Hope was everywhere they looked. Comprised of a series of painted sculptures and
video documentation of wish-making, Siahne tries to ask the question of what it mean to enact hopefulness in a world where there is very little left to have.

Tossing the coin over and over, Siahne is still waiting for their wishes.

‘Wishful Thinking’ marks the beginning of Rogers' research and interest in Affect Theory and its methods and relationship to art-making after undertaking a 3 month artist residency with Residency Unlimited Brooklyn. The project explores a crossover between performance and sculpture, creating a dialogue between these two mediums and the cyclical nature of how they can loop back into each other in Siahne’s practice. This approach aligns with Brian Massumi's explanation of Affect, which posits that affects are a way of theorising about the social forces that we encounter that might trigger the body to respond in a certain way, and they elicit pre-conscious responses that influence subsequent meaning-making processes. With this, the project explores how hope creates its own space and time. By enacting hope through repeated wishing, Rogers investigates whether this affective state can emerge even in a world seemingly devoid of hope, or does it only highlight the futility? This performative aspect of the work questions the nature of hopefulness and its persistence in challenging circumstances (A world falling apart at the seams from destruction at all angles).