Not Here

5 colour risograph print on Munken Lynx Smooth 240gsm in Crimson, Green, Teal, Orange and Black HD inks.

Edition of 30.

Signed and numbered by the artist.

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About the Print

In the Christian and Islamic story of the Seven Sleepers or the اصحاب الکهف (aṣḥāb al kahf), a group of seven human believers, persecuted for their worship, retreat to a cave for safety and sleep for 300 solar years. Upon their return, they find their money to be useless, and a world completely transformed. During their oneiric time travel through slumber, the seven sleepers are guarded by a dog, referred to as the ‘Eighth’. Not Here re-imagines this story from the perspective of the ‘Eighth’, the dog in this case as a mother. Were she to be sleeping, nursing, and dreaming with her own young, within the subterranean intestinal tracts of the cave, a negative energy of fertility and futurity?

About the Artist

Lou Lou Sainsbury (she/her) is a trans artist, filmmaker and writer based in Margate, UK & Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She self-identifies as a time traveller, making things that unwrite histories of living beings into mythopeaic dreamscapes, informed by queer & ecological activisms. She often seeks intimate approaches to understand technology, power, and how living beings transform within these worlds; using sloppy words, noisy performances and unstable images to create tricksterish fables for utopian thinking. In 2017, Lou Lou was an associate artist at Open School East. Since 2018, she has been an associate of Conditions in Croydon. She is currently studying DAI Art Praxis MA at the Dutch Art Institute.