In psychoanalysis, the erotic is what animates you; it’s inspiration, breath, vitality. The erotic here is not necessarily sexual though it can certainly hold sexual drives, sensation, excitement. Artist Eliza Fernand’s conception of the erotic is this capacious and all-consuming; for them the erotic is held within sensation, connection, a reminder of life itself. It is the knowledge that you can be touched and moved in a multitude of ways, that you can see and be seen in return. Informed by Audre Lorde’s seminal essay “Uses of the Erotic” and performance artist Annie Sprinkle’s term “ecosexual”, Fernand’s NATR-XXX at Roman Susan possesses this generosity of desire. Formed during the height of the COVID-19 quarantine, Fernand’s exhibition began as a hotline that folx could call in and be guided through various scripts detailing an erotic experience with the natural world (houseplants, water, etc.) while they were home alone. In speaking with Fernand, they stated that as their practice is multi-valent, they view the exhibition as a chance to expand upon the ideas of the hotline, “an audio piece can now be a poster, a zine now a video, all in an installation.”
Eliza Fernand, “1-833-NATR-XXX”, flyer at Roman Susan, 2022. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The iteration of NATR-XXX at Roman Susan includes projections of the hotline commercials played on a loop against the space’s storefront window and interior walls, pull tab posters installed throughout the Rogers Park neighborhood, and a collection of printed hotline scripts and images of nature, some photographs Fernand took on walks in the Rogers Park neighborhood. It’s intriguing that on the whole, the project does not center the human. While the idea of the body, living in and with a body, is explored in Fernand’s projections (in a double exposure a silhouette of a body frames images of flowers, grass, water, etc., as an unknown hand reaches towards them, and ceramic busts represent hotline callers in various states of distress) human intervention, for lack of a better phrase “the human”, is somewhat removed. While I do trace this absence to the project’s central conceit, desire and sensual experience during a time of enforced solitude, the wanted one a phantom out of sight and reach, such lack speaks to an interesting quality of Fernand’s artistic relationship to desire.
The act of longing, waiting, orbiting your person, watching your needed one, feeling seen and seeing in return, connecting with another, connecting with the Other, are highly erotic experiences. When consummation is denied, attention is forced and your presence, your total being, is mobilized for a cause, a person, a touch, a sensation outside the self. These are worthwhile feelings. These are immensely human feelings. While viewers ostensibly see the post-coital blushes of intimacy with water and fooling around with air (two of Fernand’s scripts), this consummation is communicated through text. Against background images of crashing waves and long grass caught in the breeze, lines of text communicate the stories of hotline callers who feel a sense of immense relief, of joy, and completion, after calling the hotline and experiencing connection with the world around them. This sense of bliss, is coupled with the endearing and heartbreakingly mundane: having too much ice cream in your mouth, avoiding your roommates, and chats about the benefits, sexual and otherwise, of ponytails. The distance between the viewer and the speaker serves to both demarcate the boundaries of these roles and describe how such boundaries may be transgressed.
Transgression for Fernand is a signal of possibility, an opening of new and generative ways to exist and love in the world. In the video reel, the narrator’s voice expresses dismay at the modes of being capitalism forces upon its inhabitants. To live in a world formed through transaction, buying power, callous disregard for human life, disregard for what is not productive, is a cold and gray existence indeed. During a time of physical uncertainty, when not much was known on transmission methods of COVID-19 or its long term impact, finding intimacy in connection and natural beauty—the sensations one is trained to deny when treated as “human capital”—constitutes a rebellion. To seek joy, to seek empathy, to seek a union that might be ultimately impossible but is more about the journey than the destination, is what NATR-XXX champions.
Eliza Fernand, “NATR-XXX” Storefront installation view at Roman Susan, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
In a piece Fernand made for Roman Susan, their “Rock Walk”, Fernand writes: “once you have chosen your stone, wrap it tightly with your fingers, against your your palm, the warmth of your blood pulsing below the surface will gradually change the temperature of this stone, now set adrift by your body.” Fernand likens their writing to “soft dom ecosexual”. While ecosexual refers to the piece’s subject matter, “soft dom” is the style Fernand adopts in a conscious effort to lay bare the tensions of wanting and desiring. The language and the logics of BDSM structures is what gives breadth and depth to the frictions that Fernand has captured. For what does it mean to give yourself over to desire, to the sensations, adventure, and color of the world, if not acceptance of being beholden to something bigger than oneself? That is the lesson of NATR-XXX: it is an imperative to embrace kinship and desire in its many forms. Don’t let capitalism get you down, there’s a better, more lasting way to live, to be, to love. Just take a step outside.
Annette LePique is an arts writer and Lacanian. Her interests include the moving image and jouissance. She has written for ArtReview, Chicago Reader, Stillpoint Magazine, Spectator Film Journal, and has forthcoming work in Eaten and Belt Magazines. She has a background in music.
View all articles by Annette LePique
In psychoanalysis, the erotic is what animates you; it’s inspiration, breath, vitality. The erotic here is not necessarily sexual though it can certainly hold sexual drives, sensation, excitement. Artist Eliza Fernand’s conception of the erotic is this capacious and all-consuming; for them the erotic is held within sensation, connection, a reminder of life itself. It is the knowledge that you can be touched and moved in a multitude of ways, that you can see and be seen in return. Informed by Audre Lorde’s seminal essay “Uses of the Erotic” and performance artist Annie Sprinkle’s term “ecosexual”, Fernand’s NATR-XXX at Roman Susan possesses this generosity of desire. Formed during the height of the COVID-19 quarantine, Fernand’s exhibition began as a hotline that folx could call in and be guided through various scripts detailing an erotic experience with the natural world (houseplants, water, etc.) while they were home alone. In speaking with Fernand, they stated that as their practice is multi-valent, they view the exhibition as a chance to expand upon the ideas of the hotline, “an audio piece can now be a poster, a zine now a video, all in an installation.”
Eliza Fernand, “1-833-NATR-XXX”, flyer at Roman Susan, 2022. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The iteration of NATR-XXX at Roman Susan includes projections of the hotline commercials played on a loop against the space’s storefront window and interior walls, pull tab posters installed throughout the Rogers Park neighborhood, and a collection of printed hotline scripts and images of nature, some photographs Fernand took on walks in the Rogers Park neighborhood. It’s intriguing that on the whole, the project does not center the human. While the idea of the body, living in and with a body, is explored in Fernand’s projections (in a double exposure a silhouette of a body frames images of flowers, grass, water, etc., as an unknown hand reaches towards them, and ceramic busts represent hotline callers in various states of distress) human intervention, for lack of a better phrase “the human”, is somewhat removed. While I do trace this absence to the project’s central conceit, desire and sensual experience during a time of enforced solitude, the wanted one a phantom out of sight and reach, such lack speaks to an interesting quality of Fernand’s artistic relationship to desire.
The act of longing, waiting, orbiting your person, watching your needed one, feeling seen and seeing in return, connecting with another, connecting with the Other, are highly erotic experiences. When consummation is denied, attention is forced and your presence, your total being, is mobilized for a cause, a person, a touch, a sensation outside the self. These are worthwhile feelings. These are immensely human feelings. While viewers ostensibly see the post-coital blushes of intimacy with water and fooling around with air (two of Fernand’s scripts), this consummation is communicated through text. Against background images of crashing waves and long grass caught in the breeze, lines of text communicate the stories of hotline callers who feel a sense of immense relief, of joy, and completion, after calling the hotline and experiencing connection with the world around them. This sense of bliss, is coupled with the endearing and heartbreakingly mundane: having too much ice cream in your mouth, avoiding your roommates, and chats about the benefits, sexual and otherwise, of ponytails. The distance between the viewer and the speaker serves to both demarcate the boundaries of these roles and describe how such boundaries may be transgressed.
Transgression for Fernand is a signal of possibility, an opening of new and generative ways to exist and love in the world. In the video reel, the narrator’s voice expresses dismay at the modes of being capitalism forces upon its inhabitants. To live in a world formed through transaction, buying power, callous disregard for human life, disregard for what is not productive, is a cold and gray existence indeed. During a time of physical uncertainty, when not much was known on transmission methods of COVID-19 or its long term impact, finding intimacy in connection and natural beauty—the sensations one is trained to deny when treated as “human capital”—constitutes a rebellion. To seek joy, to seek empathy, to seek a union that might be ultimately impossible but is more about the journey than the destination, is what NATR-XXX champions.
Eliza Fernand, “NATR-XXX” Storefront installation view at Roman Susan, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
In a piece Fernand made for Roman Susan, their “Rock Walk”, Fernand writes: “once you have chosen your stone, wrap it tightly with your fingers, against your your palm, the warmth of your blood pulsing below the surface will gradually change the temperature of this stone, now set adrift by your body.” Fernand likens their writing to “soft dom ecosexual”. While ecosexual refers to the piece’s subject matter, “soft dom” is the style Fernand adopts in a conscious effort to lay bare the tensions of wanting and desiring. The language and the logics of BDSM structures is what gives breadth and depth to the frictions that Fernand has captured. For what does it mean to give yourself over to desire, to the sensations, adventure, and color of the world, if not acceptance of being beholden to something bigger than oneself? That is the lesson of NATR-XXX: it is an imperative to embrace kinship and desire in its many forms. Don’t let capitalism get you down, there’s a better, more lasting way to live, to be, to love. Just take a step outside.