Two-person Exhibition with Johanna Herr at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), September 6 - October 13, 2024

Inherited and Re-made by Amy Yoshitsu brings language, as an articulator of internalizations, persuasions, fears and assumptions, to human body scale. This new work is a deeply personal approach to the many ways she seeks to get at collective and unique experiences, and how we understand and reflect on positionalities dependent on time, culture, and family conditions.

Quotations from family members are visually signaled through machine-sewn, single-use plastic detritus textile. With radiant barrier insulation to reflect our distorted world, they incorporate quotations from documents and speeches that have contributed to the birthing and entrenchment of capitalist machinations, racial hierarchy, climate denialism and forever chemicals.

All words are based on Yoshitsu’s handwriting, in different shades of yellow. In the built environment, yellow is a common color associated with caution, emergency, wait, construction, maintenance—something out of the ordinary or between the binary. They embraces yellow to reclaim the color assigned to me by the bio-racist bucketing system.

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In 1957, early television magician John Mulholland, known for sleight-of-hand magic and author of magic how-to books, retired from the stage. But his “retirement” was itself an elaborate illusion, covering that he was actually recruited by the CIA to author The CIA Manual for Trickery and Deception.

Johannah Herr uses this primary text as a launching point for a body of work, Collateral Magic, conceptually revolving around performative “magic” as an aesthetic, material vocabulary and metaphor for how propaganda is used to deceive the public.

The exhibition includes a satirical ¡AGITPOP! Press publication (created in concert with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler) which subverts a mid-century how-to magic book, a series of “magic kits,” and six lenticular prints. The work is a speculative analysis of magic in the field, tips and tricks on maintaining the illusion of democracy, and a friendly reminder that one cannot spell magician without the CIA.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

⏤ Courtesy of Vox Populi

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant

Photo credit: Constance Mensh and Raúl Romero