10/09/2026
Opening tomorrow: Exuviae
Join us from 7-10pm on Saturday, October 10 as we celebrate the opening of this tender and layered solo exhibition by Rose Barcus Rose Barcus
You can read more about it below:
Exuviae: sloughed-off natural animal coverings, such as the skin of snakes or husks of cicadas.
Exuviae (2026) is a series of small and large-scale narrative photographs that draw on the act of shedding an exoskeleton in order to allow for growth and transition. This series is an allegorical autobiography of experiences and trauma surrounding the escape of religious extremism, the questioning of gender identity, and acts of transitioning. These images depict the complex emotional and intimate process of parsing relational tensions, through self-portraiture alongside proxies of myself staged in intimately personal geographic locations, digitally layered with symbolic flora and fauna. The larger photographs are hung unframed with designs cut-out to allow light to be projected through the photo paper creating an immersive interplay between the imagery and the physical space that they occupy — a kind of shadow work.
Exuviae are the discarded, empty shells that must be shed for growth to occur when our previous form becomes too small to contain our next stage of evolution. This work is the product of a long transition, largely unseen and unrecognized — underground like the nymph stage of a cicada. When innate transformation occurs, it leads to abandoning a previous shape that can no longer be occupied authentically. Some of the images are scenes of significant events in my life presented accurately, while some are theatrical exaggerations. The contrast of light and dark within the photographs represents the duality of identity, neither fully masculine nor feminine. This body of work invites the observer to reflect upon personal experiences of shedding — past, present, and future.
