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Genevieve Belleveau, Pressed Elizabeth (2018). Installation view. In partnership with model and printmaster Elizabeth Preger and drone photographer Themba Alleyne. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Sacred Sadism Impact Pony (2018). Installation view. In partnership with Themba Alleyne. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Oral Circlusion (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Pressed Matt (2018). Installation view. In partnership with model Matt Savitsky, printmaster Elizabeth Preger and drone photographer Themba Alleyne. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Angiosperm’s Milk (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Anal Circlusion (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Pressed (2018). Installation view. In partnership with drone videographer Themba Alleyne, models James Thomas Marsh, Chase Coopersmith, Iggy Soliven, Matt Savitsky, Elizabeth Preger and Alex Patrick-Dyck. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Vaginal Circlusion (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Carnivorous Circlusion (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Circlusion (2018). Exhibition view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Circlusion (2018). Exhibition view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Bark Beetle Paddle (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Bark Beetle Paddle (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Aloe In Terrarium (2018). Installation view. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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Genevieve Belleveau, Vac-Bed Pressed Floral Arrangement Demo (2018). Performance during the Circlusion opening event. In partnership with Iggy Soliven and Themba Alleyne. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. Courtesy the artist + Garden, Los Angeles.
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“Enclosing, encircling, engulfing”: sexual power dynamics in the ecofetishist artwork of Genevieve Belleveau at Garden, LA

, 7 January 2019
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Circlusion, an exhibition by Genevieve Belleveau at Garden, Los Angeles, runs between October 27, 2018 and February 3, 2019.

Taking its title from a proposed alternative to the term penetration, Circlusion draws from the artist’s interests in BDSM and the relationship between humans and ecology. The resulting project reconsiders sexual power dynamics and the fraught human/nature divide.

For an opening night performance, a model is enclosed in a vacuum bed, a tool used in BDSM breath play. The exhibition draws aesthetic analogies between this act, with its implications of consent and pleasure, to the tradition of flower pressing. Conventionally a gesture of humans’ mastery of nature, flower pressing is re-contextualised in Belleveau’s examination of normative sexual power plays. As noted in the show’s press release:

“The exhibition’s central ontological shift — from passive reception to active engulfment — plants a seed that complicates and reevaluates perceived power dynamics.”**

Circlusion, Genevieve Belleveau, runs between October 27, 2018 and February 3, 2019 at Garden, Los Angeles.

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Garden Los Angeles Genevieve Belleveau
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