Diana Palermo: Sublimation

This solo show by Diana Palermo is grounded in the way people repress their dark-side instincts to appear civilized. Growing up queer in a Catholic household, Palermo has plenty of material to tease out the subject, whose technical name is sublimation, not repression. The artist’s photo collages of ambiguous body parts, often arranged in angular spirals or mechanical patterns, flood the amygdala and torque the optic nerve, but the overall e ect is one of trance-like release.