Cast in clay and draped in pink, lavish slips stretch just enough to have a brush with their ends. Stifling another inhale, a shining light sulks in the open, warming scattered celebrations of repeated encounters- a mournful era recycles. Scratching one last itch in an act of quiet desperation, something in the air slows to a crawl, eventually finding itself completely stopped.

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Laveen Gammie (b: Scarborough, Canada) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her recent exhibitions include Untitled at Daniel Laskarin’s Sunday Afternoon Series in Victoria, Canada; The Haunting of a Place That Longs For Your Arrival at LVL 3 in Chicago, IL; Substitute Equal Amounts: Part 1 at The Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago, IL; The Air Will Travel Behind at Stadium Projects in Guelph, Canada; 001 at WIHSH in Chicago, IL; Interface at Open Space in Victoria, Canada; Fuzzy Thinking at The Art Gallery of Guelph, In Guelph, Canada; Show 001 at Appendix Gallery in Chicago, IL. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria and a Master of Visual Arts from the University of Chicago. She continues to explore the thresholds between the domestic and social, internal vs. external psyche, and surreal reality.

An outlier of the amusement park ecosystem, dark rides rely on their ability to swallow subjects in an overwhelming lack of light. In doing so, an apparatus is constructed which can precisely manipulate the senses of which humans are most dependent: inch-wide corridors transform into caverns, projections on plaster manifest as phantasmagoria, and dollar store paraphernalia resurrects itself in discordant animation. As the drones of invisible machinery resonate on tile-laden flooring, a self-guided journey embarks behind makeshift walls and car wash curtains.

Clasping the veils which obscure the unwieldy scale of mass food production and its relation to the individualist perspective, a microwave conjoins single-use items which are the product of a knotted paradigm. Sacrifices for chemical-laden goods whose overlooked existence acts as a form of preservation. Amalgamations of livestock processed with guarded chemical formulas. Extruded into countless layers of packaging. Through the entropy of consciousness these consumer items have been regurgitated and presented through a satirical lens.

In case of emergency, there is a plan for escape. Speaking to the innate ambition to be led and for extenuating circumstances to be resolved without struggle, the phrase connotes seeming impossibilities that can become true with the forfeit of agency. This pursuit may cause one to dive into realities which separate them from the true world, each leap into the void increasingly confirming the original’s lack of importance. As myriad perspectives of existence fold inward towards implosion, a life that surpasses one’s own comes to feel in reach while the time to retain consciousness slips away.

A total of 21 pieces were featured in In Case of Emergency.