Ashton Phillips: Prey Drive

Exhibition Dates: May 4 - June 22, 2025   

Opening Reception: May 4, 1-3pm
Artist Talk: June 18, 1pm

The Ely Center of Contemporary Art is proud to present Prey Drive, a solo exhibition of LA based artist, Ashton Phillips curated by SomethingProjects (Howard el-Yasin & Suzan Shutan.)

We are living in a capitalocene era where everyday objects are fetishized as an effect of mass production, things are made to become quickly disposed of. But once they become waste, do they cease to matter? As vibrant matter, mundane objects also participate in the histories of human and non-human ecology. Who writes our histories and scientific methods, and for whom, has always determined what gets erased (white washed) versus the (often pathologized) epistemologies we’re taught to remember. The anti-wokeness of our current social-political environment, is a reminder that history repeats itself, as does the cycle of life.

Tim Morton, argues the position of interconnectedness in the natural world as a scientific method: “Evolution means lifeforms are made of other lifeforms. Entities are mutually determining: they exist in relation to each other and derive from each other. Nothing exists independently, and nothing comes from nothing.” Queer Ecology, 275. And Prey Drive is an experiential site of queer ecology, a magical environment outside normative ways of seeing and being. While speculative, it proposes regenerative care as resistance to heteropatriarchy and the myth of the biblical greatness of the white cis-male, as well as anti-trans rhetoric and bigotry. Anti-trans legislation contributes to a long history of marginalizing queer and trans people, and such persecution is heightened in our era of post-truth.

Ashton Phillips uses a site-specific wall drawing with 527 ash marks to call attention to the hypocrisy of pseudo Christians, responding to the monumental deadly weight of trans legislation efforts to erase trans people; all of which seems tantamount to hunting prey!  Viewers of this installation are also beckoned towards an assemblage of mundane materiality, familiar and peculiar, where mealworms consume Styrofoam for sustenance. Ironically, this synthetic material plays an essential role in their natural cycle of transformation over time.  Yet this process of transness is in opposition to the unnatural social construction of gender for humans, which heteronormativity relies upon to normalize desire and maintain the cis-male/female binary. 

This antidisciplinary project navigates art, science, and performativity to illuminate the injustice inflicted on queer bodies. The uncertainty of red lights and uncanny sounds prompt somatic stimulation in this haptic, precarious, complex space of queer world-building.  From a nominalist position, the inherited gaze of normativity as universalized is flawed. 

Prey Drive explores the interconnectedness of humans, non-humans, and thing power. Jane Bennett’s theory is that all matter possesses intrinsic vitality, which can potentially influence events. As well as advocacy for trans visibility, inclusion, and change, Prey Drive reminds us that self-care is a survival instinct; and Phillips reminds us that “our bodies contain waste and toxicity of the past and present … Purity is impossible. We are all plastic now.” -Phillips