Karice Mitchell
economy of pleasure
May 2 - May 31, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, May 2, 6-8pm
Silke Lindner is excited to announce the first U.S. solo exhibition with Canadian artist Karice Mitchell. Her exhibition economy of pleasure shows new photo-based diptychs, triptychs, and individual images sourced from archives of Players Magazine, a softcore publication often referred to as the “Black Playboy.” Through scanning, enlarging, and cropping, Mitchell creates works that hover between explicitness and illegibility, investigating how the Black femme body is (self-)portrayed within social, political, and cultural frameworks of oppression.
In this new body of work, Mitchell moves away from her previous use of imagery from the 1970s and 1980s, and instead utilizes archives from the early 2000s. Rather than reinforcing surface-level interpretations of visual sexual representation, she draws attention to what is subtextually inscribed onto Black women’s bodies—through adornment, modification, and mark-making. Zooming in on frequently overlooked details such as tattoos, Mitchell highlights elements that counter objectification by the music and pop culture industries, which have historically commodified Black femme bodies and their sexuality. Through acts of self-definition and narrative preservation, these subtextual inscriptions become sites of personal expression and tools for negotiating identity.
Drawing from the aesthetics of early-2000s hip hop and pop culture—particularly the stylized typography used in tattoos and graphic designs—Mitchell integrates text into her work through sandblasted lettering on glass and vinyl phrases installed directly onto the gallery walls. Words and word fragments like Paradise, Angel, and Sensation connect image, object and space by personal and cultural histories.
In economy of pleasure, pleasure isn’t freely given. Mitchell’s images are seductive and operate within a constant push-pull relation of what’s revealed and what’s withheld. Her subjects and the works themselves negotiate power and rejoice in acts of self-expression. Within an industry and system that’s designed to profit and exploit, they reclaim agency over their bodies and histories and trade with currencies of their own making.
Karice Mitchell (b. 1996, Toronto, CA) lives and works in Vancouver, CA. She received her MFA at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, CA (2021) and a BFA and BA from York University, Toronto, CA (2019). Solo exhibitions include matter of becoming, Franz Kaka, Toronto (2024); Will to adorn, Capture Photography Festival, Vancouver (2024); Intimacy Is, Burrard Arts Foundation (2023); Wil Aballe Art Projects (2023); and 1b, black legs, 52”, University of Waterloo Art Gallery (2021). Recent two-person and group exhibitions include The Lind Biennial, The Polygon, Vancouver, CA (2025); Soft Focus, Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal, CA (2024); Together/Apart, Susan Hobbs, Toronto (2022-23); Please be gentle, the plumb (2023); and Proof 28, Gallery 44, Toronto (2022).