Sonic Womb: on atmospherics
PES Futures, June 2025
For the second installment of Sonic Womb, Jesús Hilario-Reyes’s presentation on atmospherics looks to the mangrove, a tropical tree species typically found in coastal environments where water meets land, as a conceptual and visual mechanism for exploring fugitivity, illegibility, and communal embodiment. An intricate network of roots that provide safe haven for various forms of life, the mangrove weaves throughout Hilario-Reyes’ practice, taking form in sculptural works like Holy Ghosted that combine mangrove roots with found objects, and large welded-steel pieces like A River Opens Up Into Many Windows. Parallel to thoughts of “fluid togetherness,” Hilario-Reyes takes up edging or edge worlds as a framework for understanding both the ecstatic potentiality of the club, and the adaptive nature of the mangrove – spaces where the bounds of the individual and the environment are indistinguishable. In his manipulation of salvaged objects, through the addition of welded rhizomatic ornamentations and enmeshed mangrove roots, these works orchestrate blurring as more than just a protective measure but also a mode of redress. For the duration of his presentation, the exhibition space will also be partially engulfed in the dense fog synonymous with clubs and performance spaces as both a world-building tool and a means of further obfuscating individual identity.
At the root of Hilario-Reyes practice is a deep understanding and engagement with the underside of queer-nightlife as a DJ and organizer. His ongoing practice interrogates the notion of the club as wholly a space of liberatory practice. On the realities of nightlife, “Blurring and entanglement are protective measures for the impossibility of the everyday. The promise of nightlife as an idealized space is necessitated by the abrasiveness of our individual and collective reality. Still, those promises often come by way of a corporate nightlife entity.” What remains, and what he cultivates in his practice, past the “manufactured, drug-induced fog,” is that image of communal embodiment, and the real feeling of transcendence on the dancefloor. Hilario-Reyes’ works metabolize the ideas behind Drexciya and gesture towards the transgressive capability of worlding at the margins.
Synchronous to their visual installations, both artists consider sound – not just music – as a necessary component of both the club and ballroom, taking shape in Billy’s recordings of melodious ballroom commentators and Hiario-Reyes’ use of found fog horns and subwoofers as sculptural components. An accompanying playlist from Billy and DJ mix from Morenxxx are also available for listening beyond the close of the exhibitions.
