NEW YORK, NY.- Recently I have been reading about the dawn of multicellularity, and the different theories surrounding it, specifically Lynn Margulis’ Endosymbiosis theory.

In looking at this subject I was thinking about where the locus of identity would sit in a multicellular organism. A single-celled organism is alive, has individual sentience and its own will. When it evolves from a single-cell to a multi-cellular organism, how does this singular ‘I’ become a ‘we’, and how does this ‘we’ resemble an ‘I’ to itself? How does my body, as a complex network of different cell groups have a sense of unity when it is in fact a community?

As i was looking at this subject i was learning bass and playing along to ABBA videos slowed down half-speed on YouTube, which became a surreal and moving experience in itself. In one video in particular, SOS, the faces of the band members are filmed reflected in a distorting mirror, as Agnetha and Anna-Frid sing a song written by Björn, presumably about the end of her relationship with him, their faces stretching and dividing like mitotic cells.

The name and logo for the band fascinated me also: a letter for each band member, Agnetha, Björn, Benny, Anna-Frid, the inverted B in the logo ABBA, the almost genetic mirroring of the AB pairs, the 2 romantic couples that formed the band. I entertained and enjoyed the idea of ABBA as a multicellular organism, composed of cells or organelles that were the individual band members.

The paintings and sculptures I am making are loosely motivated by these two subjects: ABBA and the origin of multicellular life. I have also used the motifs of the waiter and of the lemon, both recurring images in my work. In this context the waiters represent the mitochondria that live inside every cell in our body, and produce energy for our bodies using the citric acid cycle, an 8-step circular chemical reaction that powers all life on earth. Here I enjoyed the idea of bitterness of the lemon, especially when it concerned a kind of class relationship that occurs inside every eukaryotic cell.

Some of the paintings are painted over older paintings, and I am endeavouring in the process of making the work to allow the vestiges of the old paintings to be rehoused in the composition or the detail of a new painting, in a mutualistic relation of past and present, just as the pluralism of our phylogeny is recapitulated in every cell of our body. - Justin Fitzpatrick

Justin Fitzpatrick
Mitochondrial Abba
Margot Samel
Began May 5 – June 10, 2023