HILMA'S GHOST: SPECTRAL VISIONS: A Feminist Collective Signals Magickal Futures

SPECTRAL VISIONS is a solo presentation by Hilma’s Ghost (Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder) in three parts featuring selections of artworks made by the collective since their formation in 2020 as well as a new series of artworks.

Part 1: A retrospective presentation chronicling the collective’s artistic and esoteric adventures to date, culminating in a capstone style painting fusing moments in history in addition to experiments with theorem painting, tarot and geometric abstractions.

Part 2: A monumental 16-foot long Divinatory Painting titled Cosmic Alter. This monumental artwork, developed in collaboration with a psychic medium and professional witch, is a work of such significance, it inspired and won a major public commission to be realized in New York City later this year.

Part 3: Mystical Intersection of Thought-Forms and Sigils is comprised of 28 sigils made specifically for this presentation. These works express the intersection between the visualization of thoughts and the symbolic representation of desired outcomes in the realm of magic.

Sigils are magical symbols created to enhance our intentions. They are a widely utilized foundation for spell-casting and are used as a symbolic language – a potent part of various magical practices throughout the world. Hilma’s Ghosts’s Sigils use the language of abstraction to manifest meaning and enhance a creative meditative aura. The results are spells that not only represent expressed desires, they are now the emblems of powerful entities that Tegeder and Ray [Hilma’s Ghost] have invoked and sent forth. These sigils also imprint on the viewer, reinforcing their message, continually sending them back out into the world, thereby allowing us all to help them do their work.*

Retrospectively, the full body of work from Hilma’s Ghost on view represents a remarkably interpretive environment that is simultaneously deferential to their namesake and contemporaneous in today’s social environment. This connection, decades in the making, is truly a transcultural moment that viewers will connect with.

Hilma's Ghost is a feminist artist collective co-founded by Brooklyn-based artists Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray in 2020. The collective seeks to address existing art historical gaps by curtivating a global network of women, nonbinary, and trans practitioners whose work addresses spirituality. Hilma af Klint's groundbreaking exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2018 served as a reckoning for art history's blindspots, especially for women artists considered too 'mystical' for the conservative art world. Named after af Klint, Hilma's Ghost believes that western heteropatriarchal societies maintain a false binary between spirituality and science. This bias serves to overlook womxn artists whose explorations of ancient and pre-modern knowledge systems is a source of personal strength and aesthetic innovation. Hilma's Ghost acts as a restorative project that uplifts these voices and makes them visible.

Hilma's Ghost has run online programs and free public workshops since their launch in 2020. These programs have attracted hundreds of artists and other spiritual practitioners from across the globe onto their unique platform on subjects ranging from shamanism, automatic drawing, to sigil making. In 2021, Hilma's Ghost had their first artistic collaboration with ABSTRACT FUTURES TAROT, which was shown at The Armory Show at the Carrie Secrist Gallery booth from September 9-12, 2021.

Sharmistha Ray is an artist, art critic, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. For two decades, their work has explored subjective experience through the lens of queerness, language, and memory. Ray's core practice consists of drawing, but also includes painting, sculpture, video installation, and photography. They have exhibited their work in solo exhibitions in Mumbai, New York, and Singapore, and shown in group exhibitions and art fairs in the U.S. and abroad. They are the recipient of a Joan Mitchell MFA Grant, and received their MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute. Currently, they teach in the MFA programs at Parsons School of Design and School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

Dannielle Tegeder is an artist and professor at The City University of New York at Lehman College. For the past fifteen years, her work has explored abstraction through the lens of systems, architecture, and utopianism. While the core of her practice is paintings and drawings, she also works in large-scale installation, mobiles, video, sound, and animation and has done a number of collaborations with composers, dancers, and writers. In March 2020 Tegeder founded The Pandemic Salon, a community-centric project intended to dismantle the hierarchical structures of institutional discussion, which showcases topics related to the pandemic by bringing together creative minds in an informal, online environment that has connected over 600 participants from 40 countries.