Text by Philippa Snow

Arlette’s practice, in which she has often used heavy metals to solidify intangible concepts, has typically concerned itself with the vital contradictions that animate the human experience. In this new exhibition for Liste, obedience—whether in the context of faith, love, ritual, self-curation and self-presentation, or familial ties—is presented as neither a vice nor a virtue, but instead as a material: one that is pliable, theatrical, staged, and subversive. The works that comprise The Evolution of Obedience blend religious iconography with internet aesthetics; Vegas flash with liturgical solemnity; nature with fashion. In What to Wear to Meet God, an image depicting a stage in Las Vegas is etched into steel and aluminium. That title—with its playful multiplicity of meaning, and its implied blending of haute couture and holiness—is perfectly reflective of the show’s recurrent themes. On one hand, most believers would argue that they are meeting God in every moment of their lives, making dressing for Him a perpetual act. On the other, what kind of God might we meet in a Sin City stadium? A God of popular culture, perhaps—a distant star. The Evolution of Obedience recognises a natural human inclination towards worship, whether this adoration is directed towards a literal deity, or a dazzling celebrity. Such disparate figures, after all, help to shape our perception of the world, and our deference in the face of their power becomes, for Arlette, its own medium. Who do we choose to follow, she asks, when everybody is performing? And what do we believe in when we occupy a world in which belief can be monetised?

Anybody who thinks they’re God, commands the title of another piece, go on stage. The negotiation of private and public personas can be complex in an age of perpetual broadcast, and being reminded of one’s relative smallness—in contrast to the magnitude of God, or otherwise—can be generative as well as humbling. The crucifix, as a potent symbol, has appeared numerous times in Arlette’s work—in The Evolution of Obedience, it is featured in the titular sculpture, in the form of a jagged metal cross resting on plush crimson velvet. (Red, a shade that evokes Catholic vestments and raw, erotic glamour simultaneously, is more or less the only colour that appears in the show, in bloodlike splashes.) More recently, the artist has mentioned her discovery of the sobriety cross, a concept in which each of the four points stands for a vital component of life: spirituality; family, love and friendship; pleasure; work. This fusion of religious aesthetics with elemental needs and desires is at the heart of these works, which at once recognise the intrinsic value of organised devotion, and hymn wildness and uncertainty. In On Domestication, a set of fierce teeth press into sheet metal, as if threatening to break through—a literalisation of the authentic self still extant beneath the smoothly crafted exterior of the formalised world, drawing parallels between the domestication of animals, and the ritualised obedience of conventions like faith and familial love. The loss of Arlette’s father, a muse for her previous solo exhibition José, informs the worldview expressed in these shrine-like pieces, many of which pose profoundly philosophical questions without also providing definitive, dead-end answers. That our parents’ formative care and attention can feel close to holy explains why we use parental language when discussing God in scripture: love is its own form of secular worship, and in the absence of a parent, self-love takes on a similarly spiritual quality. Taken as a whole, The Evolution of Obedience is suggestive of an acceptance of doubt and uncertainty as a divine catalyst for growth—a revelatory state of potential, imbued with the perpetual possibility of surprise.