Alicia Mersy, Fear Eats the Soul

Alicia Mersy’s Fear Eats the Soul opens to contrasting iconographies, mixing wellness and care with news and finance. The artist collapses currency symbols and soothing eye masks into amalgamated motifs that oscillate above scrolling headlines. Borrowing the title from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Mersy speaks to the antagonizing authority of fear, and its deadly effects on the mind and body. News headlines are replaced with appeals to the viewer, “Be Who You are Behind Your Mind,” “Formless Presence,” and “Shift Your Thinking to Awareness.” In a nod to self-help videos and fear-mongering news publications, Mersy encourages us to move beyond the body, engaging a deeper sense of self. The set of instructions signaling virtuosity resonate like that of news headlines, a disembodied suggestion demanding action.