Art Show: Eleanor Mahin Thorp's exhibit, Bend of the Southern Cross

In the heart of the bustling city, a unique exhibition is set to open its doors. Eleanor Mahin Thorp, a renowned artist and professor at City College, City University of New York, is having an inaugural solo exhibition at PLATO, titled "Bend of the Southern Cross," from August 30 to October 4, 2025.

The exhibition, organised by PLATO and curated by Carola Dertnig, promises to be a thought-provoking journey into the world of deserts and extraction. Thorp's work examines how landscapes are abstracted and reimagined through these processes, challenging the perception of deserts as lifeless, empty, or desolate. Instead, she sees them as teeming with forms of life, energy, and history.

Thorp's project, "Bend of the Southern Cross," is the result of her research in the Atacama region in northern Chile, one of the driest and most mineral-rich regions on Earth, positioned at the heart of the "lithium triangle" spanning Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. The Atacama is over 200 million years old, and its salt pools have remained stable since before the Dinosaurs Age.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is Eagle Eyed, a work that draws from Thorp's personal lineage, reimagining her mother's coffee ground reading tradition through stone. The piece engages with the physicality of stone and mineral, mimicking their weight and surface structure. Some areas in Eagle Eyed resemble specific landforms, while others abstract into symbolic languages, numeric sequences, or linguistic fragments. Thorp layers pigment and mineral matter to reconstruct strata and surfaces, co-creating with the subject itself.

Another noteworthy piece is Downswing, which features a yellow lithium brine in a mine that resembles a stock market graph. The work raises questions about our willingness to sacrifice such landscapes for profit and progress if we fully understood their animistic and ecological intelligence.

Bend of the Southern Cross explores the metaphysical power embedded in geology and acknowledges the dark history of colonial violence and extractive capitalism. It calls to listen to geology, myth, local knowledge, and ancestral memory, rather than simply exploiting the land.

Thorp's work also includes We Met Before Flamingoes, which features salt growths on the stone surface of the painting, reminding us of the symbiosis of various ecosystems in Atacama. A Whisper explores the auditory eeriness of desert canyons, similar to the "uncanny valley" effect in robotics and CGI.

The public reception will be held on September 5, 2025, from 6 to 8pm. Don't miss this opportunity to witness Thorp's thought-provoking exploration of deserts, extraction, and our relationship with the land.