Antonia Luxem: On Falling

Curators

Mariana Lemos

Artists

Antonia Luxem

Conceived as a dream incubation chamber, On Falling by Antonia Luxem examines falling as a structural condition of collapse and renewal. Drawing on Luxem’s sustained engagement with dreams, hypnosis and altered states – alongside mythic narratives of descent such as Sisyphus, Icarus and Dante’s Inferno – the exhibition considers falling as a circular process of replay.

On Falling unfolds as a red-lit, snail-like installation combining film, painting, sound and performance to form a sequence of interconnected spaces. Suspended elements, projections and textured surfaces establish a structure organised around looping, delay and return. This reflects the recursive logic of falling and dreaming as an ongoing process that operates in an infinite loop: falling gives way to dreaming, dreaming gives way to falling, each state generating the conditions of the other. Within this cycle, attention intensifies, intention emerges, and linear time begins to fracture, producing states of disorientation in which the boundaries of the self loosen up.

At the centre of the structure, a volcanic stone operates as a material anchor. On Falling extends Luxem’s cinematic practice into a spatial format, allowing the temporal logics of her film work – repetition, suspension, interruption – to operate across multiple media. Recurrent images and fragmented vocal material register the unstable threshold between waking consciousness and dream states.

Through continued engagement with the dreaming–falling cycle, falling becomes a method that can be practised beyond the exhibition space – as a form of knowledge – through which linear time expands and slips, perception sharpens, and the self becomes unstable. Within this instability, processes of self-exploration take place, allowing emotional and psychic material to surface.

At the point of transformation, a metaphysical shift takes place: time is felt differently, and new relations to the world are made possible.

Antonia Luxem's work spans film, writing, performance and painting, and explores altered states, time, dreaming and queer subjectivity. Based in London, their work has previously been shown at ICA, London; The Horse Hospital, London; Gasworks, London; BFI, London; LUFF, Lausanne; Aesthetica Art Prize, York Art Gallery; the B3 Biennale, Frankfurt; La Friche, Marseille; and les abattoirs, Toulouse. Luxem is self-taught, an alumnus of Open School East and the FLAMIN Fellowship, and a former resident at Gasworks.

Alongside the exhibition, there will be a programme of events (to be announced soon) and a new publication of Antonia Luxem’s essay A Manual On Falling And Dreaming, published by Burley Fisher Community Press.