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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.
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The figure of the witch as contemporary folk hero with Devin Troy Strother at Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles

, 27 February 2019
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Devin Troy Strother‘s The Worst Witch solo exhibition, made in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, was on view at Los Angeles’ Shoot The Lobster, running November 17, 2018, to February 17, 2019.

Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, The Worst Witch (2018). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artists + Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles.

With a two-channel video work and installation, the show explores the ever pervasive mythology of the witch. Today, when identity has a growing position in our political imagination, the enchanted figure is at once an icon of the politicised body, a symbol of patriarchal power accumulation, and a point of fascination for a renewed popular interest in mysticism and belief systems.

The Worst Witch offers a window into these themes, inviting the visitor to consider the witch as contemporary folk hero. As Shoot The Lobster director Ebony L. Haynes writes: “Even the worst witch will never really leave you hanging because there is too much power wielded in being the bigger person […] She gains power when she loves herself and all of her witchiness – even when it makes her feel like an Other, like the worst of those who surround her.”**

The Worst Witch by Devin Troy Strother in collaboration with Mandy Harris Williams and Alima Lee, showed at Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles, between November 17, 2018 and February 17, 2019.

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Alima Lee Devin Troy Strother Ebony L. Haynes Mandy Harris Williams Shoot the Lobster
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