Johanna Hedva's Multisensory Exhibition at Joan Explores Disability, AI, and Goth Aesthetics

Johanna Hedva's exhibition 'If You’re Reading This, I’m Already Dead' at Joan in Los Angeles creates a sensory environment centered on disability experience, running from November 11 to February 3. The show features a central sculptural work titled 'The Clock Is Always Wrong (Other Mouth)' (2023), consisting of a 4.5-meter circular grey carpet with a mouthblown glass orb filled with black ink and soot that drips continuously. Three large mixed-media wall works called 'Bigger,' 'Harder,' and 'Deeper' incorporate materials like hair, jujitsu submission poses, urethral sound wands, a cock cage, and the artist's blood, exploring pain and pleasure. Multichannel soundworks sample cosmological events including solar vibrations and aurora borealis recordings. Curator Suzy Halajian noted the press release was collaboratively generated using an AI program fed by Hedva, resulting in ambiguous text blending human and machine voices. Hedva, who published 'Sick Woman Theory' in 2016 as a protest manifesto, integrates themes of death, astrology, S/M sex, and AI as tools for disembodied artistic production. The exhibition includes an accessibility handout instead of a traditional checklist, providing detailed material descriptions and personal context to aid interpretation. Hedva's work converges crip theory, AI technology, and goth subculture to challenge normative bodily experiences.