Sympathy For The Devil (2023)
displayed at Chelsea College of Arts (London) on May 4, 2023
Combining research that has been conducted on subcultural fashion, music, and lifestyle for about over a year, and witchcraft practices such as sigil magick for about seven months, this tapestry and ac- companying zine were made as a form of social commentary and critique on the Satanic Panic. This phenomenon occurred in the United States from the 1980s to the early 1990s in which allegations of satanic cults committing ritual abuse began to spread across the country, and in turn mass hysteria along with it. With the nation-wide fear of Satanic cults, these anxieties bled their way into pop culture, demonizing films, music, and games like Dungeons & Dragons. More popularly, subcultural music genres such as rock and metal began to be associated with the “Devil’s music,” though this conception can be traced back to the late 1940s/early 1950s with the roots of rock and roll, which stemmed from jazz and rhythm and blues genres.
The tapestry was created using imagery inspired by sigils – drawn symbols used to depict deities, but now used for the purposes of manifestation in modern witchcraft practices – and the process used to design sigils. Selecting songs and words that related to the Satanic Panic, the letters used to spell out the titles were abstracted and created into fifteen different sigils in an intuitive drawing process. All sigils on the tapestry are painted in silver, aside from the red sigil created from “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones, which also contributes to the title of this work. Red candle wax was dripped onto the tapestry, alluding to ritual practices. Additionally, the action of melting wax in and of itself can be inter- preted as a form of ritualistic performance. The edges of the tapestry are burnt to reference the burning of records and memorabilia of musicians who were deemed immoral by conservative communities; a famous example being The Beatles after John Lennon claimed they were “more popular than Jesus” in 1966.
You can find the accompanying zine for this work here.
Process shots of candle wax being dripped onto tapestry
Photos by Lucy Wilde
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