A holy trinity of cool feminists have come together to ask What Does Our Future Hold? in an upcoming, one-night-only exhibition of tarot cards. London’s Polyester Zine has teamed up with the Montreal/global art collective The Coven and Dream Wife bassist Isabella Podpadec to give an intersectional reading on what’s the universe has in store for us, but with the traditional tarot deck transformed to represent diversity in a way that the original cards sadly do not.
“With 2016 hurling the world into political turmoil, and our futures seeming more uncertain than ever before, many young people have turned to astrology and the world of tarot to seek comfort and reassurance in trying times,” the organisers note, adding, “However, with the rise of popularity in tarot comes one glaring issue, the lack of diversity within the deck. After practising tarot as a means to counsel friends and props for conversational queues, co-curator Isabella Podpadec found how painfully straight, white, cis, able bodied the majority of available tarot decks currently are.”
The exhibition, held at Dye House Gallery in Hackney Wick on 7 January, will include work by 50 artists, including photographers Maisie Cousins, Hobbes Ginsberg, Chloe Sheppard and Ashley Armitage, designer Clio Peppiatt, illustrator Grace Miceli, artists Eleanor Hardwick and Ayesha Tan Jones, Dream Wife band members Isabella Podpadec and Alice Go, and loads more. The full risograph printed deck of tarot cards will be available in a limited edition, launching on the night.
What Does Our Future Hold? is at Dye House Gallery in Hackney Wick on 7 January 2017.
Credits
Text Charlotte Gush
Photography Laurence Philomene