At its most fundamental, it may be said that a ritual is the series of gestures that defines the communion between two distinct spaces. Historically, this has largely come to evoke the phenomenal’s brush against the noumenal, but, from a more agnostic stance, it can also describe the encounter between two physicalities, two discrete geographies. Something of this provides the point of departure for Hanako Geierhos poetic interventions. Her multifaceted objects in their various incarnations—from leather panels propped against the wall to modular bundles deployed into public space—offer themselves as the catalysts for so many minute interactions.

These are the building blocks for a secular liturgy of sorts, but it is worth stressing that transubstantiation is not their end point. Instead, these props invite a type of rehearsal and performance of the everyday that is embedded in a myriad of specific sites and bodies. Some of these negotiations are documented in the slide installation on view. A series of modular objects were placed in public spaces in Delhi/India; Marseille/France and Cotonou/Benin. Within each context, they occasioned a set of diffuse but significant actions. These ranged from the simple acknowledgement of a co-presence, to them being coopted in various functional uses, from seating arrangements to props to accidental sculptures.

Like the sheen on well-worn leather, the traces of these various encounters remain, imprinted on the material, embossed as a social patina that is a testament to these momentary coming-togethers and moving apart. Ultimately, each gesture remains tenuous, incomplete and ephemeral, but therein lies its poetry—in an open invitation to a communion that is never fixed. Far from formal alchemy, Geierhos imagines a delicate sociability, rich for its many becomings.

Franklin Melendez