Lúa Coderch’s first solo show at The Ryder Projects centers on the difficulties in forming a language for how we care for ourselves and how we care for others.

Lúa Coderch’s first solo show at The Ryder Projects centers on the difficulties in forming a language for how we care for ourselves and how we care for others. exhausted and exuberant, a social diagnosis proposed by Jan Verwoert, illustrates the affective pressure to constantly reproduce our capacity to “show up,” for our lovers, our friends, our work, or something that links them all together in the age of network-ed being. It is a pressure to perform, and a difficulty in articulating dissent as performativity shapes consciousness and language. In Coderch’s works, we are invited to inhabit this paradox and sit with these contradictions. 

Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist from the late 19th century, famously argued that language “is the social side of speech, it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a community.” Under the premise of language as indicator and reproducer of the social, we invite you to experience Coderch’s work while considering the dual meaning of “mantra” as provided by a digital dictionary. One definition is a spiritual principle used to aid in meditation; another is a mass-produced slogan. These definitions exist with simultaneity in a society shaped by the ongoing corporatization of affective, spiritual life and interpersonal care. Coderch’s practice softly and directly immerses in this contradiction.