Art Showcase: Eleanor Mahin Thorp and Bend of the Southern Cross Exhibition
In the heart of New York's historic Bowery, half a block from the New Museum, PLATO, a contemporary art gallery founded by Elena Platonova, is hosting an inaugural solo exhibition by Eleanor Mahin Thorp. Titled "Bend of the Southern Cross," the exhibition runs from August 30 to October 4, 2025.
Thorp, an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY who grew up in Utah, has exhibited in various galleries and museums, completed numerous residencies, and received several awards. Her work explores landscapes abstracted and reimagined through extraction and mythology.
Thorp's exhibition delves into the metaphysical power embedded in geology and acknowledges the dark history of colonial violence and extractive capitalism. The Atacama region, the focus of her research in northern Chile, is one of the driest and most mineral-rich regions on Earth, positioned at the heart of the "lithium triangle."
In Downswing, Thorp uses yellow lithium brine to resemble a stock market graph, visualizing the collision between geology and capitalism. The Atacama is home to cyanobacteria that emit an enormous amount of oxygen, not unlike rainforests, yet it faces threats from lithium mining. The Lican Antay people have resorted to long-standing myths to poeticize Atacama as a preservation tool, questioning if we would continue exploiting the land if we considered our ability to think and transform it comes from the land itself.
Thorp's artwork, A Whisper, explores the eeriness of desert canyons, similar to the "uncanny valley" effect in robotics and CGI. Symbols, figures, and messages emerge from rock faces in Eagle Eyed, reminiscent of the Zoroastrian concept of Fravashi. Thorp layers pigment and mineral matter to reconstruct strata and surfaces, co-creating with the subject itself.
Eagle Eyed draws from Thorp's personal lineage, reimagining her mother's coffee ground readings through stone. In We Met Before Flamingoes, salt growths on the stone surface of the painting serve as a reminder of the symbiosis of various ecosystems in Atacama. Thorp's artwork asks if we would still be willing to sacrifice such landscapes for profit and progress if we understood their animistic and ecological intelligence.
The public reception for "Bend of the Southern Cross" will be held on September 5, from 6 to 8pm. The exhibition calls for listening to geology, myth, local knowledge, and ancestral memory, urging us to reconsider our relationship with the land and its resources.
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