Zody Burke. The House of Asterion

The morning sun reverberated from the bronze sword. There was no longer even a vestige of blood. “Would you believe it, Ariadne?” said Theseus. “The Minotaur scarcely defended himself.”

– The House of Asterion, Jorge Luis Borges, 1964. (From Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings)

A new series of works shall be introduced to gallery visitors, featuring sculptural high reliefs, illustrations (accompanied by short stories written by the artist), and several 3D floor-based sculptures, many of which contain oblique allegories to the Labyrinth of Greek mythology. These new works endeavor to challenge viewers to reconsider how modernity reimagines spaces of disorientation and entrapment. Through magical-realist reinterpretations of classical mythology, Burke offers varying glimpses of alternate narratives woven through the labyrinth. The sculpture Pasiphaë, Queen of the Rodeo draws thematic references from both the foundational Greek myth that inspired Borges’ story and contemporary Americana, bridging two distinct cultures—an ongoing theme in Burke’s work. The upstairs space, conceived in the clarity of the white cube, serves as a prelude to the darker, more visceral experience below. The exhibition utilises mythological tools to probe broader questions of power, identity, and the spaces we inhabit—whether spatial, digital, cultural, or existential.

Zody Burke (b.1991, Manhattan) is an American multimedia artist and musician who is currently living and working in Tallinn, Estonia. Informed by her perspective as a New Yorker displaced by the city’s economic inaccessibility, Burke creates cyphers through sculpture and other media through which to cartograph the complexity of American identity within late capitalism, exploring how this mutable identity is refracted and transfigured through the mirror of other cultural spatiality. Often utilizing narrative structures, she is interested in interfacing world-building with geological time, and visualizing a diffusion of boundaries between distinct countries & their national mythologies by the omnipresence of what lies beneath. She recently completed her master’s thesis at the Estonian Academy of Art, which attempted to bridge sociopolitical narratives, legacies, and trajectories of industrialization between Estonia & the USA.

Curator Liisi Kõuhkna
Graphic design Taylor “Tex” Tehan
Title Typeface Brian Uhl
Technical support Hobusepea gallery, Gregor Sirendi

Support/Grateful to Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Paavli Kultuurivabrik, Valge Kuup Studio, Estonian Academy of Arts, Kanuti Gildi Saal, Batuudijuss, Pruulikoda Tuletorn, Punch Club, Põhjala Pruulikoda, Dan Edelstein, Nora Schmelter, Taylor “Tex” Tehan, Gert Gutmann, Lauri Raus, Jordan Reyes, Roberta Staats, Nora King, Harry Figueroa, Lara Brener, Nick Klein, Oscar Ramos, Jane Treima, Diandra Rebase, Michael Anthony Farley, Laura De Jaeger, Kerli Kurikka, Kaspar Kannelmäe, Composite EE, Karjase Sai

Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture, and Liviko AS.