It’s no coincidence that the Surrealist movement emerged out of the chaos of the early 20th century, in a post-war world where thinkers like Sigmund Freud were rewriting what we knew about the links between the mind and the body. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the movement has stayed the course, either. It continues to resonate as life grows weirder by the day and we continue to pull back the curtain on the myths and mechanisms behind reality, dreams, and the human minds that pull them together.
There’s another, more magic-tinged explanation that’s stuck around through the ages to explain the oddities at the edge of our dreams and reality, though. Witchcraft. From the witch trials of early modern Europe and America, to the resurgence of occult practices online, witchcraft has been tied up with our attempts to explain the unusual happenings in the world around us, especially from a feminist (or, historically, gruesomely anti-feminist) angle, for as long as we can remember.
Now, a new show at London’s LAMB Gallery aims to shine a spotlight on the connections between these two perspectives, with a show aptly titled Surrealism and Witchcraft.