Slow Dance is proud to announce Superstition, an exhibition of recent paintings by Noelle Africh. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in Chicago.

Although nothing appears to be amiss, a disquieting atmosphere is palpable. A sense of unease is communicated through the tone of the work: sinister yet covert. Paranoia finds a home in the surreptitious.

The exhibition takes its title from a superstitious family heirloom, called the “death clock”.

The paintings on view hang next to an antique cuckoo clock. The cuckoo clock was produced in the Black Forest in Germany in the late 1800s. The clock is a family heirloom that has been passed down on my mother’s family since 1902. I inherited this clock upon the recent death of my aunt, Lois Owens, in the Spring of 2024. The superstitious lore passed down from generation to generation is that when someone in the family passes away, the clock stops ticking on the day of their death, and must be subsequently rewound. The “death clock”, (a term coined by my mother) is not a beloved object. Several generations of my family have considered destroying the death clock to rid themselves of the burden of living with this object. This decision was never carried out, due to fear of bad luck and negative consequences. The death clock serves as a reminder that at any moment things can go terribly wrong. I do not believe that my aunt wanted me to live with this burden. I believe she wanted me to find my way out of it.- Noelle Africh

Africh uses a muted palette and works on small scale canvases, completing each painting in a single day. They work with distemper, a fragile and precarious painting medium made from rabbit skin glue, pigment, and calcium carbonate. The paintings are susceptible to damage and deterioration when exposed to moisture and/or temperature changes in the environment. 

Africh was raised with two conflicting worldviews: one, a high degree of irrational superstition, the other, an emphasis on logic, math and reason. Prior to painting, Africh worked as an actuary, using mathematical models to predict when certain risk groups will die. Painting provides an opportunity to release control and predictability over an inevitable outcome. 

Artist’s Bio:
Noelle Africh (b. 1992 Chicago, IL) lives and works in Chicago, IL. They received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2022) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (2015). Their work has been exhibited at Galerie Gisela Clement (Bonn, Germany), RUSCHWOMAN (Chicago, IL), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Stasias Gallery (Chicago, IL), The Plan (Chicago, IL), SHED Projects (Cleveland, OH), The Green Gallery - West (Milwaukee, WI), Switch-Hook Projects (Chicago, IL), Patient Info (Chicago, IL), among others. They are currently a Lecturer in the Painting and Drawing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.