Are you allergic to the 21st century?

Imagine becoming allergic to everything you enjoy… This major new group exhibition takes Todd Haynes’ influential understated masterpiece Safe (1995) as a starting point for a series of new commissions in moving image, sculpture, print, writing and performance from Claire Makhlouf Carter, Chris Paul Daniels, Camilla Wills, Yoshua Okon and 2014 Turner Prize nominee James Richards.

Haynes’ film stars Julianne Moore as Carol White, a 1980s Californian housewife who becomes allergic to her carefully controlled personal environment. It can be read as a reflection on environmental issues, sexual politics, the AIDS epidemic and suburban disillusionment. White appears trapped, either incapable or unwilling to reconcile the psychological and the physical.

Safe is one of a series of exhibitions coming up at HOME that takes a classic or influential film as inspiration. Alongside the exhibition, we will be producing a new book Transactions of Desire: Are you allergic to the 21st century?