The Fortune teller

You’ve got to help me find an end to the nightmare
’Cause I can’t stand this pain and the curse of time
Somewhere in your eyes
I’ll find the answer
Give me the truth I’ve been looking for
Be my guiding light, I’ll take my chances
Turn the card, seal my fate, close the door
—Deep Purple

The Fortune Teller, in order of appearance, is the fourth character encountered in Yasmine’s quest for the Heptahedron.

The Fortune Teller knows the impact her predictions will have on the life of the trembling figure seated in front of her. Cards in hand, one eye fixed on this person, the Fortune Teller carefully gauges her words, and says, “I too am worried about the future; I too struggle with the troubled present; I too am confronted with an evanescent past. Who will help to ease my mind?”

When she is not in the grip of self-doubt, the Fortune Teller helps us to organise reality, to make it ours. Revealing what is ignored or hidden, she transforms a patchwork of diverse perceptions into an organised fabric, united in space and, perhaps most importantly, in time, circumscribing the domain of anxiety. Just like an artist, or perhaps even a curator, the Fortune Tellers delimit a coherent but ephemeral image of the world so that we might understand its fate—our fate. Does the Fortune Teller not have the power to raise everything and anything? Just like a powerful pump, does she not have within that body of divination a great pipe that goes down to the bowels of things, into the deep layers, to suck up and bring forth in giant sprays what was held dormant and flat under the ground? What was there, but not seen, longing to feel the sun?

To bring the Fortune Teller to life, and to soothe our souls, this exhibition presents the divinatory works of Jessika Kharzik, Miriam Stoney, and Alvaro Urbano.

Rendez-vous in Østre Skostredet at Østre, Northing Space, and an old, abandoned wooden house, and to find out more about what goes on in the head of this character, read Side Magazine: The Fortune Teller.

—Yasmine d’O.