Self Otherness and Hybrid Beings (HOLLY STEVENSON)

Guest artist HOLLY STEVENSON joins Freud Museum curator VANESSA BONI and JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Down Below' by Leonora Carrington. The original manuscript was "lost", so it was re-written via dictation and first published in 1944 in the surrealist journal VVV. Having fled from Nazi occupied France after her lover Max Ernst was arrested, the book describes first hand Carrington's traumatic confinement in a mental institution in Spain and her escape, eventually settling in Mexico City. It also connects directly with her 1940 painting of the same name.   We discuss hybrids, psychosis, illness, seamstresses, figurines, transference, trauma, worms, bedsheets, potency, alchemy, lucidity, fetishes, limbs, candy, autofiction, worms, visions, rebirth, Oedipus, transference, psychoanalysis, surrealism, netsuki, genius, creative coherence, brutal rape, civil war, role reversals, mythological beasts, defending insanity, hearing ghosts, colour shifts, inner transformation, wild tiger, symptomatic gut, dynamic unconscious, mythic underworld, female identity, symbolic structures, being celiac, the drive to create, Nazi occupied France, the surrealist imagination, borders of knowledge, structure of the unconscious, orange blossom poisoning, green as a magic colour, the studio and the couch, the Santander sketchbooks, and alternative ways of engaging with reality. 'Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal' curated by Vanessa Boni at Freud Museum 25 March - 10 August 2026 HOLLY STEVENSON holly-stevenson.co.uk @holly_stevenson MAC Museum of Contemporary Art Gibellina City of Culture The Sainsbury Centre RAMM The Royal Albert Memorial in Exeter 3 Oct 2026 - 21 Feb 2027 'Living Labrynths: Art and Fungi' 'Holly Stevenson: Tracing the Irretraceable' 14 May - 29 June 2025 including essays by Elizabeth Fullerton, Sharon Kivland and Emily Steer 'The Debate' Frieze 2023 curated by Fatos Üstek 'Another Mother' 2022 The Artist's Garden  'Mother Art Prize' 2020 ARTISTS  Daniel Buren Dorothea Tanning Leonora Carrington Louise Bourgeois Max Ernst Tracey Emin Salvador Dali BOOKS + WRITERS + THEORISTS Ali Smith Professor Alyce Mahon  Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism 'Book of Symbols' Carl Jung Jane McAdam Freud Leonora Carrington 'The Debutante', 'The Hearing Trumpet', 'The Oval Lady' Marina Warner Mikhail Bulgakov 'The Master and Margharita' Pierre Mabille  Prophecy Cole 'The Shadow of the Second Mother' Sigmund Freud 'The Interpretation of Dreams'  GALLERIES + GALLERISTS + INSTITUTIONS The Artists' Garden created by Claire Mander at thecolab.art support via change.org 'Long Live the Artist's Garden' Faro Santander supported by Fundación Banco Santander Freud Museum National Gallery Edinburgh Peggy Guggenheim Tate Gallery