Diego Ramírez, Gentrified language stained with capital like blood in a vampire’s teeth 7A, 2023. Gasoline nozzles, resin and enamel, dimensions variable. Photography: Aaron Rees. Courtesy: the artist and MARS Gallery, Melbourne.

MARS Gallery presents Diego Ramírez‘s exhibition Vampires of The Earth. The exhibition features photographic and installation works dripping vampiric elements such as fake blood and graveyard motifs. Ramirez explains:

“Vampires of The Earth is an exhibition inspired by the social mediatisation of Pemex’s spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2021. “The day that pipe burst, I received a hilariously performative message checking in on me,” says Ramírez, “a drop of oil came to mind, like a little tear…falling to hell.” The works in the show take this anecdote as a departure point to look at the image of falling oil, comparing it to a drop of blood that allures the vampire or a tear that afflicts the melancholic. Indeed, from the voracity of extractive capitalism, to the performance of feelings on social media, Vampires of The Earth is about the dead, who carry on living.

Following this organising logic of undeadness, the show employs mediums such as neon, which mimic the vampire’s cycle of awakeness and slumber, by requiring electricity same as this creature necessitates blood. While also also incorporating black reflective surfaces that allude to the vampire’s inability to gaze at its own reflection, suggesting the exploitation of fossil fuels are a mirror of our image. Finally, it mines wellness infographics to re-encode the messages of care culture with a death drive – as if infected by the dark gift of vampirism.”

Opening Event: Thursday 27 April, 5 – 7pm.

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