Horror
Text by Jill Mulleady

The concept of the uncanny, as articulated by Sigmund Freud and later explored by artists such as Mike Kelley, centers on the unsettling psychological tension created when the familiar is revealed to be disturbingly strange—a repressed domesticity surfacing in unsettling form.

However, when we shift the critical focus from the intellectual discomfort of the uncanny to the visceral, aesthetic shock of horror, the artistic mechanism changes from one of subtle recognition to one of necessary confrontation. Horror in art is not merely the grotesque; it is the deliberate application of fear and repulsion to unlock deeper psycho-social truths.

The body as a site of transformation, mimicry, and vulnerability is central to the practices of artists such as Cindy Sherman, Tyler Mitchell, Sondra Perry, and Precious Okoyomon. When hyper-realistic human sculpture is covered in viscera or contorted by internal psychological trauma (as seen in the work of Paul Thek or the choreographies of Anne Imhof), the work immediately bypasses intellectual apprehension. The resulting visceral dread forces the viewer to deal with the subject on a primal, physiological level, making the artwork a direct site of confrontation with mortality and decay. It transforms the object of comfort into an object of abjection.

By forcing the viewer into confrontation with the abject, the artwork tests the very limits of the subject. The grotesque rendering of the body—the use of viscera and decay—acts as a reminder of the body’s ultimate chaos and dissolution, bypassing intellectual distance entirely. This corporeal dissolution is visibly manifested in the raw, organic materials used by Carol Rama, the systematic fragmentation of the human form in the sculptures and wall works of Tetsumi Kudo and Andra Ursuta, the fluid, kinetic, and often repulsive machinery of Mire Lee, and the radical performance, films, and recordings of Antonin Artaud and Mike Kelley. This is why horror is so crucial: it challenges the cleanliness of the “I” that has been separated from the “not-I,” making the aesthetic experience a visceral, momentary regression to a point before the subject was fully defined.

Other works, from the cinematic terror captured by Dario Argento and Diego Marcon, the depictions of systemic horror by Jonathan Glazer, to the critical destruction embodied by Jordan Wolfson, and the subversive fragments of Bruce Conner, channel collective anxiety to expose political failure and institutional malaise. By displacing these real, intangible societal anxieties onto a fictional monster or a violently distorted figure, narrative, or space, the work offers an urgent, safe pressure release.

It is in this context that appears the potent idea of the ghost—the lingering, invisible presence that represents unresolved trauma and historical shadow. The spectral nature extends to the architectural haunting found in the work of Cyprien Gaillard and the figural paintings of Pol Taburet and Oliver Bak, along with the immersive soundscapes featuring the audio compositions of Mati Diop & Fatima Al Qadiri all contributing to this shift.