Invasive Species: The Things We Learn to Live Alongside

Often, we think of transformation as something singular. A stark line drawn in the sand, bordering a before and an after. More often, it arrives through accumulation. An impact, or several impacts, whose effects settle slowly into the body. Experiences linger. They alter perception, reshape behaviour, and become embedded in us in ways we do not always recognise.

Invasive Species

This is the premise of invasive species, curated by Danielle Mezh. Bringing together fifteen women artists across sculpture, painting, installation, scent, sound, and moving image, the exhibition explores how invasion and intrusion continue to generate dissonance within our inner worlds long after they occur.

invasive species is particularly compelling in that it did not begin as a curatorial concept but a personal experience. Mezh describes the exhibition as emerging from a moment of sudden, engulfing discomfort that was difficult for her to identify or understand. As she began visiting artists’ studios, she found herself repeatedly drawn to practices that explored similar states of unease.

Bad Double - Katerina Lukina

The title of the exhibition evokes ideas around ecological crisis, and/or systems of power. But  Mezh chooses to explore invasion through a slightly more intimate lens. It’s not particularly the act of invasion itself that concerns her, but what’s left afterwards.

“The exhibition isn’t concerned with the act of invasion itself, but its aftermath. How these moments register once they’ve already occurred, how they linger, settle, and begin to reshape perception.”

This is an interesting distinction. It brings to mind contemporary culture’s fascination with moments of ‘rupture’, or how through the media, we are frequently exposed to scenes of impact and resulting collapse. The processes of rebuilding and enduring in the aftermath receive far less attention, despite often containing the greatest emotional texture.

Invasive Species

We transport this residue into new relationships, environments, versions of ourselves. It shapes the lens through which we perceive the world, influencing how often we brace, whether we dive in headfirst, shrink back, expand…usually without us even noticing.

How then, do we distinguish invasion as harm from invasion as transformation? Can we distinguish them at all?

Mezh’s answer remains deliberately unresolved. She ensures invasive species leaves room for contradiction. The same force, she suggests, can be destructive and generative at once.

Danielle Mezh

Drawing on Surrealism, mysticism, the eerie, and the natural world, many of the works engage with forms that exist beyond purely rational explanation.

The exhibition’s sensory elements are particularly enriching. Mezh’s collaboration with olfactive artist Misia-O’ to develop a bespoke scent that responds directly to the exhibition’s themes extends the experience beyond the visual and into the bodily realm.

Talking About A Revolution - Efrat Merin

Although gender is not foregrounded as the exhibition’s central thesis, invasive species exclusively features women artists. Many of the works derive strength from an attentiveness to accumulation, intimacy, and subtle shifts in perception.

Across the exhibition, the body appears not as a fixed entity but as a locus of vulnerability and change; continually encountering and being reshaped.

Francoise - Performance

At its core, invasive species is most interested in making visible a condition many of us already recognise: the feeling of being changed by something we cannot fully explain.

The exhibition asks how these invasions move through us, and what they leave behind. It is not a question with a neat resolution, but some experiences are not problems we can solve; they are just things we learn to live alongside.