COSMIC GIRLBOSS

In the organizer's words:

Here, in the heart of capitalist Western Europe, we are promised fulfillment through our economic potential: that a dream job and a financial cushion will set us free. But as the political and economic instability we have exported to the Global South and East now knocks on our own door, this dogma of individual optimization is beginning to crumble.

This is where the COSMIC GIRLBOSS comes in. She understands systemic crises as spiritual tests of the universe, which prompt her to "manifest" material security even more strongly. If she loses her job, she does not form a union, but charges her crystals and asks her tarot cards for the right path. She is the ultimate entrepreneurial spirit.

This exhibition brings together artists who playfully and lovingly explore gendered spiritual entrepreneurship and its historical, political and technological contexts. Emily Hunt offers us talismans to navigate neoliberal systems and allows the GIRLBOSS to actually get in touch with the great mystery of the cosmos. The artist duo DLBLR subverts and reclaims the cultural appropriation and commercialization of spiritual practices in pop culture. Salesforce Child creates a new religion out of the horrors of the smartphone screen and the naked, frenzied worship of pure capital that it enables. Margarita Athanasiou provides a fantastic historical perspective on the relationship between fascism, occultism and the internet.

COSMIC GIRLBOSS spiritual entrepreneurship lends itself particularly well to digital platform economies such as TikTok and Instagram. Paid tarot readings and algorithmically determined horoscope apps are booming, often marketed specifically to women* and queer people. The term 'GIRLBOSS' itself is a sexist product of the 2010s internet, describing female entrepreneurs who cloak their hyper-capitalist ambitions under a veneer of pop-feminism. The archetypal GIRLBOSS doesn't have to be a "girl", and indeed is very rarely a boss, but her restless pursuit of money is characterized by a gendered financial precarity.

This exhibition recognizes the power of the COSMIC GIRLBOSS and shows how her spiritual strategies help to withstand the volatility of our crumbling economies. At the same time, it gently points out that there must be more to their and our spiritual lives today.