A THING LEAST LIKE ETERNITY

Video Portrait, June 2021

‘The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.’- CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

A performed video image of the artist housed inside a skull, having given birth to themselves, looped in an eternal moment. The work references Lee Edelmann’s theories of the Child, the queer death drive, and futurity in lieu of the heteronormative reproductive paradigm. The artist posits the viral potential of visualising their subjectivity as its own form of progeny, the conception of one’s experience becoming its own creation myth. The piece owes its title to CS Lewis’ epistolary novel, ‘The Screwtape Letters’, chronicling the exchange between two generations of demons, or in this case, two generations of the self.

The work continues Magee’s practice of self-mythology and image-making, drawing upon their childhood as a queer person navigated through fundamentalist Christianity, grief, and chronic pain. It explores the death worship and eroticism at the heart of religious thinking. Magee is concerned with the stories we tell ourselves, our memories the units of temporal measurement, and the faith we put in them.

Shortlisted for RDS Visual Arts Awards 2021. Contact for viewing.