AFFECT CABINET
An Exhibition by Jenny Nirgends
October 17-20, 2025
Friday, October 17 - Monday, October 20, 2025
Gallery Hours 12-4pm
Opening Reception: Friday, October 17, 2025, 6 PM to 9 PM
Automata welcomes Los Angeles-based Mexican artist Jenny Nirgends with her new exhibition AFFECT CABINET. Nirgends transforms Automata’s main gallery space and windows into a Cabinet of Curiosities, featuring a series of assemblage sculptures and the premiere of her film Chimeras Lullaby. AFFECT CABINET represents the culmination of Nirgends’ ongoing investigation into the fragmentation and deformation of the body as a means of reorganizing ways of looking. Nirgends examines the deformation of bodies, especially one's own, through a reconstruction of seeing. The exhibition represents Nirgends’ response to the struggle and often failure of representing and constructing meaning through form.
Nirgends’ new film Chimeras Lullaby is made from x-ray film that has been cut down to 16mm frames and spliced together to create an ethereal landscape.Chimeras Lullaby transverses an amalgamated body, eluding form, only defined by flickering frames of blue light and rhythm. The film is both a micro-topography and a portrait of bodies assembled into a single being, fragmented and trapped within the frame.
Nirgends’ also investigates self-portraiture in her assemblage sculptures constructed by fusing found objects with cast fragments of the artist body.
About the Artist:
Jenny Nirgends is a filmmaker and artist. A collector of all things, her works reflect this by melding found objects, sounds, and stories with her characters into miniature worlds that bring them alive together. She works with stop-motion animation puppets, collage and creates both narrative and experimental animated shorts. She graduated from Michigan State University with an BA in Film Studies, and went on to receive an MFA in experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts. Aside from her own practice she works on commissioned commercial work and teaches animation and animation history.
Chimeras Lulaby features a score by Dakota Blue and sound design by Alexander Pijuan-Galindo. The film was completed with the support of the Interbay Cinema Society, through a 2024 Light Press Grant.