Children of the Future

In her ambitious new exhibition for Cooke Latham, Fani Parali invites viewers into an alternate realm, a space designed for and inhabited solely by children. Through this inversion of our own reality Parali, like all truly great purveyors of science fiction, not only looks ahead reflecting upon the challenges facing the next generation but also invites critical analysis of our societal status quo.

For 'Children of the Future' Parali has installed an intricately painted floor that covers the gallery like a second skin. Inspired by stellar constellations, neural pathways and industrial blueprints this becomes the unapologetically theatrical 'stage' upon which her sculptures and performers converse. 

 The soundscape that permeates the exhibition is projected from the same wall giving a strange audio/ optical illusion that the paintings themselves are emitting the haunting recording. Parali has crafted this new soundscape by channelling multiple voices, using recordings of both professional singers and children to create a call-and-response between the 'machine' of the gallery and the 'children' who inhabit it.

Two performers lip-sync the haunting duet of a child with a machine; an adult performer opens their mouth, and the voice of a child emerges. The performers, like the sculptures are adorned with plaster casts that both support and confine their movements. Parali's work often focuses upon caregiving, with the fragile interconnectivity of care systems and our societal responsibility for one another. In 'Children of the Future' the metal armatures stand for both the endurance but also the limitations of the care systems we have collectively formulated. Throughout the exhibition there is a sense of threshold spaces, of portals to alternate realities that sit, cheek-by-jowl, within the space of the gallery.

Everywhere there is the sense of spaces beyond what we see, of energy and sound being channelled and the possible formulation of identity beyond the body's limited presence. In entering a space that is designed and occupied by children the viewer is invited to question whether children are, by virtue, more receptive to these threshold spaces than us. Whether in us, the 'adult', this child also lurks, willing to acknowledge alternate realities. Alternate futures.