Hilma’s Ghost Haunts New York’s Grand Central Station With a Dazzling Mosaic

Their big MTA unveiling came during Frieze Week, and I saw Tegeder and Ray later that night, at a feminist dinner they hosted with artist Eve Biddle, who also runs the Upstate New York artist nonprofit Wassaic Project.

 

The three women have been collaborating on dinner parties infused with magic and spirituality, as well as hosting a mystical after-hours event at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum earlier this year celebrating the “Harmony and Dissonance, Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930” show. (It was the Guggenheim’s 2018–19 af Klint blockbuster that first inspired Hilma’s Ghost to work together.)

 

 

Last week’s gathering was held in Biddle’s childhood home in the East Village, which was also the studio of her late mother, feminist artist Mary Ann Unger (currently the subject of a solo show at New York’s Berry Campbell Gallery).

 

The hosts assigned each guest the role of a notable woman from history, with place cards providing their biographical details. Tegeder and Ray cast a circle to welcome in the spirit of these foremothers, from the goddess Hecate to artists including af Klint, Unger, and Pamela Colman Smith, the original creator of the tarot deck.

 

Biddle did all the cooking, as well as making the ceramic plates and candle holders, one for each diner, for practicing candle magic. If you’re not familiar with candle magic, it can be as simple as making a wish when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake. This is the kind of forgotten feminine tradition rooted in pre-Christian goddess worship that Hilma’s Ghost hopes to renew with their paintings and their new subway artwork.

 

— Sarah Cascone, Artnet

 

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