In “Aporia,” artist Katherine Covarrubias confronts the complex nature of religion as a mechanism of indoctrination, attempting to understand the form of an amorphous entity onto which people can – for better or worse – project their desires and impulses. In navigating this ambivalence, Covarrubias was confronted with the limits of her own philosophical posture.
It became evident that even in her skepticism, she remained embedded within the very discourse she sought to interrogate. As a result of her upbringing, God was woven into Covarrubias’s life through childhood rituals, holiday traditions, and family structures – many of which have since fractured or disappeared. In this context, the figure of God mirrors a familiar relational dynamic: an authority that demands loyalty, forgiveness, and compromise, sustained by the persistence of unresolved attachment.
What initially appeared as cynicism revealed itself instead as a deferral of grief – a resistance to acknowledging God as something once experienced as a person beyond a structure. Aporia ultimately emerges as an allegory for family dynamics: the compulsion to stay, the difficulty of severing belief from love. In the persistent unease of trusting what cannot be seen, Covarrubias occupies a space of aporia – doubting in both directions, suspended between disbelief and longing.
The exhibition will remain on display through March 28.