“Are you allergic to the 21st century?”
This major new group exhibition takes Todd Haynes’ influential understated masterpiece Safe (1995) as a starting point for a series of new commissions in moving image, sculpture, print, writing and performance from Claire Makhlouf Carter, Chris Paul Daniels, Yoshua Okon, 2014 Turner Prize nominee James Richards and Camilla Wills alongside existing work by Michael Dean, Sunil Gupta, Laura Morrison and Jala Wahid.
Haynes’ film stars Julianne Moore as Carol White, a 1980s Californian housewife who becomes increasingly allergic to everyday domestic products and routine activities, eventually moving to an enclosed community in New Mexico. It can be read as a reflection on environmental issues, sexual politics, the AIDS epidemic and suburban disillusionment. White appears trapped, either incapable or unwilling to reconcile the psychological and the physical.
Safe is one of a series of exhibitions coming up at HOME that takes a classic or influential film as inspiration. Alongside the exhibition, we will be publishing a new book, Transactions of Desire: Are you allergic to the 21st century? featuring responses by artists and writers to the languages of self-help and the film Safe.
Supported by:
