My edges are sharpening
Jenine Marsh, Aurélien Potier and Iris Touliatou
March 16 - April 29, 2023
Gianni Manhattan, Vienna


“If only I could sleep. If I could shrug off consciousness for even just an hour. (…) Sleeping in five minute patches. Slipping out of fuzzy consciousness, it’s back–the dream. Can’t even call it that now. Animal eyes gleaming wild, presence of blood, unearthed skull, again those eyes. Rising up from the pit of my stomach. Shuddering awake, my hands, I need to see my hands. Breathe. My fingernails still soft, my teeth still gentle.

Can only trust my breast now. I like my breasts, nothing can be killed by them. Hand, foot, tongue, gaze, all weapons from which nothing is safe. But not my breasts. With my round breasts. I’m okay. I am still okay. So why do they keep shrinking? Not even round anymore. Why? Why am I changing like this? Why are my edges all sharpening–what am I going to gouge?”
Han Kang, The Vegetarian

My edges are sharpening is an exploration towards liminal desires. Borrowing from Han Kang’s novel “The Vegetarian”, within which the protagonist brutally defies standardised categories of desire, consumption and ultimately the constitution of what it ultimately means to be human., My edges are sharpening is looking into acts of agency, defiance, subversion and ultimately self actualisation.

Liminal desire here is used not only as a trope of authenticity, but more profoundly as an affective and emotional history that plays out in liminal spaces between the social and domestic stratifications determined by a capitalist and patriarchal law. The radical nature of liminal desire is adumbrated as a force that cannot exist or thrive within, and thus refuses, the hierarchical spaces of power structures and will for now flower at the edges.

Jenine Marsh uses defunct markers of capitalism and exchange, such as train pressed coins and expired currency, shifting contact into realms of mechanical mutilation, forgery and destruction. In their reimagined state as sculptural entities, coins become an interface for the deconstruction and dispossession of subjugated identity. Together with newspaper cuttings from the last existing socialist newspaper in Toronto and artificially preserved flowers, ageing unperceivably under a layer of artificial latex, her works propose micro utopias of resilience and resistance.

... (excerpt from exhibition text)



golden hour (hedge)
Flowers, wire, steel, altered and train-pressed mixed-currency coins, synthetic rubber, acrylic IV varnish, hardware.

thirst (jewelry to the working class)
Flower, newspaper clippings, train-pressed coins, mixed-currency coins, glass jar, steel, wire, acetate, synthetic rubber, acrylic UV varnish, melted plastic container, hardware.

golden hour (in the mood for / a metaphor about a process)
Flowers, wire, steel, altered and train-pressed mixed-currency coins, newspaper clippings, synthetic rubber, acrylic IV varnish, hardware.

thirst (one goes to a spring of fresh water / as it is still being born)
Flower, newspaper clippings, altered mixed-currency coins, rolled mixed-currency coins, steel, wire, acetate, melted plastic bottle, synthetic rubber, acrylic UV varnish, hardware.