Catalina Tuca: Body Omens

Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is pleased to present Body Omens, a solo exhibition by Catalina Tuca with a guest performance by Mónica Palma, and curated by Elisa Gutierrez Eriksen. Based on a collection of objects shaped by human use, Body Omens presents a speculative investigation in which observing shapes, folds, and erasures reveals information and spaces for interpretation. Over the past five years, Catalina Tuca has collected, analyzed, cataloged, and interpreted forms in objects such as chewing gum or used soap bars, as imprints of bodies. The marks and forms left on these objects are identified and classified as oracles, offering insight into the people associated with them and creating a comprehensive speculative divination system. Divination systems appear across cultures and throughout history, conventionally associated with the "occult," blending tradition, symbolism, and spiritual connection (for ex. cartomancy, floromancy, geomancy). These are structured methods or practices used to gain insight into hidden knowledge, future events, or unseen causes, often through the interpretation of signs found in nature or domestic materialities. For example, Tasseography (reading coffee grounds) originated from the Ottoman Empire and focuses on interpreting shapes in the grounds. Patterns at the bottom indicate the past, while those near the rim suggest the future. Echoing these forms of divination, Tuca's project creates a direct connection between people and the objects they use, seen beyond their functional roles, intersecting history, culture, and tradition with fictional and intuitive narratives and forms of knowledge. Through display strategies that heavily mimic institutional museum conventions, soap and chewing gum will be presented as precious archaeological artifacts in a space that merges a museum and a conservation laboratory, integrating the objects with intervened photography to illustrate speculative classification and oracle-reading methods. The display highlights the connections among collecting, accumulating, archiving, and preserving, presenting these objects as revelations of hidden knowledge.