The world around us is full of Death. This has always been true, but it is especially heightened in our recent times of deep aloneness, awakening to truths we haven’t wanted or weren’t able to see, and rupture of everything around us. As our communities experience growing pains—shifting, re-configuring, some disappearing—so too do we experience these processes with our belief systems, identities and our many flavors of relationships. For some, this experience has involved a very literal reckoning with Death, and therefore, also with Love, Abundance, and Healing. For this is the nature of Opposites. What happens in the liminal space between polarities? What does it mean to exist with contradiction as your birthright? How do we satiate our obsession for Life and Living in our current state?

The Opposite of Death is the second collection by Los Angeles-based artist and activist, Jillian Adel, that showed at Stay Fresh gallery in Syracuse, NY from Nov 5-9, 2021, that explores what happens to the relationships with ourselves and each other as those who exist in the name of Life reckon with what it means to live in a world ruled by those who worship Death. Through her language-based art, her mission is to be in Radical Observation, to engage with primal, often shadowed, themes, to create an aberration from reactivity and chaos, and to connect us through the complex, intimate, often messy corners of our hearts.

The book is a 72-page, 8.5x11” full color art book featuring works from the collection as well as additional art and writings not displayed in the show.