A Nearly Tangible Fiction//Une fiction presque tangible is a group show co-curated by Roxanne Arsenault and Joséphine Rivard at gallery Patel Brown in Montréal.

The show focuses on the effects of presence and corporeality. Exploring the representation of a painted, drawn, or sculpted self through mythologized personal stories.

Navigating between the digital and the archaic, Yaldo utilizes different material languages that include ceramics and imprinting on clay with using 3D printed cylinder seals, as well as video and green screen. By borrowing the visual and conceptual codes of ancient stories and recontextualizing them in her own personal discourse, multiple temporalities become intertwined to create her own narrative identity and underline the process of self-determination.

The reliefs combine Mesopotamian scenes and patterns with excerpts from her performative videos, while walls are dotted with a schematized version of her body transformed into a neo-artefact, like the Lacertidae, or wall lizards, often found on the facades in her native region of Iraq. A close friend of the artist shared that in Africa, wall lizards are called “house guests”. Yaldo likes to view her objects as such.

The ceramic handbag is a nod to early representations of basket carriers and also inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s text “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”.