Interior Infinite

Interior Infinite brings together an international group of artists whose works span photography, video, performance, and sculpture. Predominantly featuring portraiture, with an emphasis on self-portraiture, the exhibition focuses on costume and masquerade as strategies for revealing, rather than concealing, identities. Across these works, disguise functions as an unmasking, as artists construct their own images through adornment in order to visually represent embodied experience, memory, and understanding.

Interior Infinite draws on the spirit of Carnival, a celebration of both radical togetherness and unique self-expression. The title is drawn from Rabelais and His World, an influential text by Mikhail Bakhtin, which extolled the potential for carnivalesque practices to overcome the limits of repressive conformity and expand our social imagination. The vibrant, fluid, and myriad expressions of identities seen in the exhibition become an act of resistance to erasure, pushing narrow definitions of normativity to include a broader range of lived realities. As Bakhtin writes: “The interior infinite could not have been found in a closed and finished world”.

Featuring: Lacie Burning, Claude Cahun, Nick Cave, Charles Campbell, Dana Claxton, Martine Gutierrez, Kris Lemsalu, Ursula Mayer, Meryl McMaster, Zanele Muholi, Aïda Muluneh, Zak Ové, Skeena Reece, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Sin Wai Kin, Carrie Mae Weems, Zadie Xa.

Listen to episode 19 of The Polygon Podcast, featuring Durban-based visual activist Zanele Muholi in conversation with photography curator John Fleetwood and independent curator and writer Missla Libsekal.

Listen to episode 18 of The Polygon Podcast, featuring  curator Elliott Ramsey in conversation with artists Dana Claxton and Skeena Reece.

Interior Infinite Audio and Exhibition

Presenting Sponsor

This presentation is part of The Polygon Gallery's exhibition series New Perspectives: revealing diverse perspectives, untold stories, and new voices in visual art.

Generously supported by Brigitte & Henning Freybe, and Paula Palyga & David Demers, through their Founding Membership in The Polygon’s new Curator’s Circle; Leonardo Lara & Michael Prout, and Terrence & Lisa Turner, through their Membership in the Exhibition Circle.

Media Sponsor

Banner image: Meryl McMaster, Dream Catcher, 2015. Courtesy the artist; Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto; and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montréal.

Nick Cave - Blot - Interrior Infinite
Nick Cave, Blot, 2012, video still. © Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Dana Claxton - Hand Tooled (4 Ellen) - Interior Infinite
Dana Claxton, Hand Tooled (4 Ellen), 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Yinka Shonibare - Un Ballo In Maschera - Interior Infinite
Yinka Shonibare, Un Ballo In Maschera, video still, 2004. © Yinka Shonibare CBE RA. Courtesy James Cohan, New York.
Carrie Mae Weems - Missing Link, Justice - Interior Infinite
Carrie Mae Weems, Missing Link, Happiness, 2003. © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Martine Gutierrez - Demons, Yemaya 'Goddess of the Living Ocean' - Interior Infinite
Martine Gutierrez, Demons, Yemaya 'Goddess of the Living Ocean', 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.