Spilling Out

Zavisha Chromicz

new installation
June 28 - August 17, 2024

Spilling Out
Spilling Out
Spilling Out
The safe harbour of the fleshy bits
The safe harbour of the fleshy bits
Finding a way to drop anchor in this bottomless pit
Finding a way to drop anchor in this bottomless pit
The safe harbour of the fleshy bits (detail)
The safe harbour of the fleshy bits (detail)
Finding a way to drop anchor in this bottomless pit (detail)
Finding a way to drop anchor in this bottomless pit (detail)
Spilling Out
The safe harbour of the fleshy bits
The safe harbour of the fleshy bits (detail)
The safe harbour of the fleshy bits (detail)
Finding a way to drop anchor in this bottomless pit
Finding a way to drop anchor in this bottomless pit (detail)
Finding a way to drop anchor in this bottomless pit (detail)
Spilling Out
Spilling Out
Spilling Out
Spilling Out
The Knots: Big
The Knots: Small

Spilling Out

Spilling Out , 2024
installation view

Artist Talk with Zavisha Chromicz on Thursday August 15 at 7:30pm, door at 7pm. Refreshments. In Collaboration with the CSDA/CCAD.


Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present a new installation by Zavisha Chromicz and the group exhibition Standing Ground III, Mighty and Real.

Chromicz’s new exhibition, Spilling Out, continues a body-based exploration established in their previous two exhibitions, The calming beauty of the body's molecular landscape (March 2022) and Mother Load: The challenge of suturing the mitochondrial tear (December 2022). While negotiating the boundary of fat positive action and the health-minded limits imposed by an aging body, Chromicz focuses on beauty and protection as they interweave personal narrative with an ongoing undertaking to curb the spread of intergenerational trauma.

Zavisha Chromicz (b. 1972, Poland) self-identifies as "a queer trans mixed Roma self-taught artist who has been making community-based mixed media and fibre art for over 20 years. They have consistently made art as a medicine for survival. Their work explores disability in throwaway culture and the joy of queer debauchery, and honours the survivors of childhood and ancestral trauma." Early collaborators include Jeremy Laing and Will Munro.

Will Munro's legacy features prominently in our concurrent Pride group exhibition Standing Ground III, Mighty and Real, with works in Munro's memory by FASTWÜRMS and Zachari Logan, as well as a photograph by the artist. Works by Will Munro and Robert Flack were exhibited together in the original Standing Ground (2014), and with an expanded field of artists in Standing Ground II, Chance and Variation (2016).

In Standing Ground III, Mighty and Real the field is expanded further. Munro's mantra "know your history" extends to queer art world elders such as Ross Bleckner and to self-empowered black queer music icon Sylvester and his disco hit "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real", a title which echoes in a photographic homage to Sylvester from 1989 by Robert Flack.