Curator Statement:

This  exhibition catches the tail end of the Year of the Wood Snake and wraps with the arrival of the new lunar cycle. 

Serpents, snakes, and other slithering sorts have appeared in art and literature across nearly every culture since antiquity, carrying associations that teeter between temptation and transformation, horror and divination, death and eternal return. The artists in this exhibition reconfigure the serpent – whether directly or through traces – as an embodiment of mortality, spirituality, alterity, hybridity, and monstrosity. Some cast themselves, obliquely or overtly, as serpent or part-serpent, while others situate these creatures within dreamlike environments, rendering their scaled bodies as abstractions of psychological realms. Shedded skin, forked tongue, deep throat: hissssssss invites viewers with an expansive reading of our maligned serpentine friends, oft-misunderstood and deeply feared, recoiling as we leave behind a year marked by chaos and renewal.