Andrew Edlin Gallery Showcases 17 Women Artists Channeling Spirits

Seventeen women artists whose practices emerge through spirit communication are gathered in Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds at Andrew Edlin Gallery in Tribeca. Curator Susan Aberth, in a lecture on the show, drew a through-line among the participants: their messages are intended to improve the world, and the spirits they channel uniformly counsel abolishing patriarchy. Paulina Peavey's jewel-like paintings anchor the presentation, hung against cobalt-blue walls and layered in reds, blues, and yellows that read like stained glass, their embryonic folds containing droplets, petals, and eyes. Peavey credited the work to Lacamo, a nonbinary spirit who first contacted her in the 1930s and conveyed a vision of humanity evolving toward what she termed one-gender perfection. Aberth also traced a historical erasure: André Breton borrowed the Surrealist notion of psychic automatism from mediums, then stripped its metaphysical content, reframing the practice as an expression of individual psyche. The exhibition arrives amid a wave of occult-themed shows but distinguishes itself by asking what esoteric art can make possible, emphasizing its capacity to unsettle entrenched social hierarchies.