September 2023, SMAC Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

There are consistent keywords that are synonymous with Frances Goodman – femininity, identity, beauty. The artist’s last three exhibitions with the SMAC Gallery have been a rumination on the lived experiences of women, role playing and the agency they have over their bodies, as well as how society projects expectations onto them.

Over the years, the multi-disciplinary artist has used photography, painting and sculpture to question what separates the pious from the perverse. Through some unconventional materials and painting methods, Goodman has articulated her study of the feminine through sequins, acrylic nails and even fake eyelashes as pubic hair, but very rarely has she offered her own vulnerability as a conduit into the human condition beyond the feminine.

Altered States, her new solo exhibition, is an exploration into humanity’s fragility and our everchanging politics of being. It is as much a collective trip as it is a journey into one’s own consciousness. For the first time, Goodman ventures into ceramics, a medium she plunged herself into two years ago after emerging from the dense fog we’d all been under since the pandemic. After a residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) in the Netherlands, she was ready to put clay to hands and witness what emerges.

“One of the reasons that I started ceramics is because it had been a long time since I'd experienced failure in the production of the works I made because I had spent so long understanding and perfecting the processes and materials I use. I was yearning for something to challenge me again,” says the artist. What she got was a masterclass in failure and letting go. From works blowing up in the kiln and rendered useless to recently experimenting with AI, Goodman has had to deal not only with the actual physical weight of the ceramics but also the heaviness of venturing into an artform she’s a novice at. The new kid on the ceramics block is, however, cautiously optimistic.

The ‘Pillars’ – as Goodman refers to the sculptures – are ceramic structures of pills, assembled by shapes, colours and sizes to form towers of tablets that leave you somewhat discombobulated because of their sheer magnitude, but chiefly as reminders of your own mortality. Accompanied by motivational affirmations created in Goodman’s signature style of using acrylic nails, the artworks feature quotes such as “Live/Love/Life” and “White Knuckling It” (a term often used by recovering addicts that refers to powering through the struggle or anxiety with a challenging situation). The vibrant fake nail hues in upbeat affirmations conjure up thoughts of faking it till you make it.

A skillful inferrer, Goodman uses Altered States as a microphone to pointedly ask questions around humanity’s need to heal, escape and enhance the living experience. From Ayahuasca retreats meant to open portals into the spiritual realm, to motivational quotes pinned as magic carpet rides to positive thinking, human beings are in constant search for remedies to help us live with ourselves.

Goodman has solidified her place in art innovation history through painting using sequins and in Altered States, she uses the glittering portraits as an elixir to the often mundanity of everyday life. Inspired by the works of American surrealist painter and founding member of the women’s liberation movement in Mexico in the 1970s, Leanora Carrington, Goodman references and reimagines some of Carrington’s work in Altered States. Much like her venturing into ceramics, the artist employs sequins in new techniques to showcase escapism through our current obsession with magical realism. Some paintings are portrayals of dreamlike states created to mimic 3-D like effects where the sequined characters almost leap out at you, while others adorn elaborate costumes fit for a sci-fi series. A costume change, like popping a pill, can alter a mood and a room.

“I suppose the artworks are me trying to make peace with human fragility and how there are all these aspects in ourselves. We all have that innate compulsion to sometimes escape our lives but also this very sincere and earnest desire to be better. We need all these things – pills, affirmations, release and so on – to prop ourselves up,” explains Goodman.

Grappling with her own vulnerability has caused Goodman to look into the ever-changing human body, and mind, that frequently vacillate between strength and frailty. As the world heaves and sighs through all the supersonic change we’re experiencing, pop culture points to our collective need to live in any world other than this one, where we’re able to fly and soar above our limitations.

Goodman explains, “I have always been interested in the body as a kind state and sovereignty, that we turn inwards when we have little control on the outside. So, the more out of control our outer world seems, we turn inwards because that's the only place where you have any sense of control.”

What Goodman achieves with this exhibition is to hold a mirror up to humanity – our yearning for healing and our inherent desire to dream, to be better – without judgement or exultation.

Text by Lerato Tshabalala