Femi Dawkins (aka Jimmy Rage) is a London and Amsterdam-based multidisciplinary artist whose work bridges fractured diasporic and autobiographical narratives. His practice spans visual art, music, poetry and performance, engaging audio-visual media. He was selected for New Contemporaries (2021), the first Lisson Gallery artist prize, and won the prestigious Gieskes-Strijbis Podiumprijs in 2022, and was features in Gagosian’s landmark exhibitionRites of Passage. In what follows, this essay provides a deep analysis of Dawkins’ work, drawing on a primary interview and research to situate his themes and methods within critical theoretical frameworks and art-historical contexts.

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Rita Haddoub and Pawel Dziadur

Currently on show at Annex London through 11 July.

Concrete & the Immaterial brings together the collaborative and individual practices of Rita Haddoub and Paweł Dziadur in a charged exploration of concrete, technology, and memory. Set against the backdrop of Beirut’s infrastructural decay and Poland’s contested political landscape, the exhibition transforms rubble, surveillance systems, and historical iconography into living installations. Through interactive cinder blocks, woven spectrograms, and immersive video, the artists expose the emotional and political weight embedded in materials we often overlook.

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Ophélie Napoli

Exhibited at Keller, Zeughausstrasse 31, Zurich, Switzerland in 2023

Synopsis: This essay explores Ophélie Napoli’s sculptural practice as presented in My Guts on Your Table (Zurich, 2023), focusing on how her use of beeswax, rusted canvas, and iron reveals an artistic investigation into decay, transformation, and exposure. Napoli builds material structures that physically perform these states, allowing disintegration, tension, and repetition to become central elements in the works’ meaning. The study considers Napoli’s position within and against postminimalist traditions, particularly in relation to Eva Hesse and Anselm Kiefer, and highlights her development of a practice with forest that function as spatial and temporal events rooted in bodily distortion, architectural instability, and absurdism. 

References and methodology: The methodology applied combines close formal and theoretical analysis, and art historical contextualisation. The study examines Napoli’s material processes and compositional decisions in relation to artistic precedents, particularly Hesse’s explorations of impermanence (1968), Serra’s spatial weight (2015), and Kiefer’s mytho-historical symbolism (1982). The approach incorporates phenomenological observations of viewer interaction, considering how scale, horizontality, and theatrical placement affect perception and emotional response. Theoretical references include Sartre’s reflections on non-closure and identity (2003), Foucault’s spatial frameworks of control and resistance (1977), and Guattari’s concept of transversality (2002), which supports analysis of Napoli’s open, porous structures. Material semiotics and iconographic reading are also used to interpret recurring motifs like grids, threads, and ruptures as signs of constraint and seepage. Throughout, the research treats Napoli’s work as a critical and emotional language, responsive to personal and systemic trauma, and capable of holding contradictory states in active tension. Read

Lea Lerma

Works included from exhibitions in London and Marseille.

Synopsis: Part II/II of Sunend's survey of Lea Lerma's L’Envers de l’Endroit explores the work through the discourses of Romanticism, cosmic unity, and modern-day disillusionment. Using ideas from art history, psychoanalysis, and visual theory, it looks at how Lerma creates a photographic style that moves between personal trauma, connection to nature, and spiritual depth. The images studied, ranging from muted mountain landscapes to eerie interior scenes, show a changing play of light, time, vulnerability, and inner change. The essay further highlights Lerma’s use of diagonal lines, broken narratives, and mystical tones, and presents her work as a modern expression of Romantic and spiritual traditions, shaped by today’s visual language.

Key references and methodology: This study uses a comparative visual analysis that combines historical context with symbolic interpretation. Drawing from interdisciplinary visual theory, including the work of Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, and John Berger, it examines how Lerma composes her photographs and how viewers might respond to them emotionally and intellectually. Art historical references such as Goya, Caspar David Friedrich, and Rembrandt are used to situate Lerma’s formal strategies within a broader visual tradition. Hermeneutic and ethnographic approaches help explore her treatment of time, collective memory, and personal subjectivity, while an iconographic reading of recurring elements, like spirals, diagonals, and the shifting balance of light and shadow, uncovers their psychological weight. Finally, the study analyses how Lerma builds narrative through visual sequencing and non-linear storytelling. The main sources include her photographic series from 2020 to 2022, alongside historical artworks, philosophical texts, and critical essays, allowing for a pluralistic yet grounded interpretation of her work. Read

Lea Lerma

Works included from exhibitions in London and Marseille.

Synopsis: In Part I/II of Sunend's survey of Lea Lerma's L’Envers de l’Endroit, we examine the lives of a communitas first formed during the COVID-19 lockdown. An abandoned building becomes the site of a micro-utopian experiment, which, following the lockdown, expands into the wilderness and evolves into a spiritual undertaking. Through chiaroscuro, layered spatial dynamics, and fairytale-like imagery, Lerma's lens-based practice investigates themes of autonomy, resilience, and collective belonging. Acts of trust and resistance—such as tattooing—unfold within an aesthetic framework that merges the fantastical and the real. Animals, light, and fragmented compositions emerge as semiotic markers, capturing the group's precarious yet fearless existence. This first part concludes by examining how Lerma’s non-hierarchical process transforms photography into a political act, reimagining freedom and presenting a vision of collective agency that transcends the limits of confinement.

Key references and methodology: This study employs a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach, combining cultural theory, art history, sociology, and ethnographic frameworks to explore Lea Lerma’s lens-based practice and its political underpinnings. Victor Turner’s theory of liminality provides a foundation for understanding the communitas as a group existing in a transitional, non-hierarchical space, while Roland Barthes’ "punctum" highlights the emotional disruptions embedded in Lerma’s imagery. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s critique of kitschy middle-class sensibilities, the essay situates the group’s rejection of societal norms as a form of resistance. Comparisons to Renaissance works, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, illuminate the structural unity of Lerma’s compositions, while Nikki Sullivan’s exploration of tattoos as both self-expression and communal markers underscores the trust and intimacy inherent in the group’s rituals. The essay also integrates Carles Guerra’s critique of photojournalistic rhetoric to differentiate Lerma’s embedded, unprivileged perspective from traditional modes of representation. Drawing from sociological studies on subcultures (Gelder, 2007), Turner’s exploration of Icelandic sagas, and Wolfgang Tillmans’ notions of free and fearless spaces, the essay positions Lerma’s work within a broader discourse on autonomy, freedom, and precarity. This layered methodology, supported by texts on temporality, symbolism, and micro-utopian practices, frames Lerma’s images as both aesthetic and political interventions, resisting linear narratives and engaging with her communitas’ experience in a fragmented, post-pandemic world. Read

Theo Papandreopoulos

Exhibited at Lion & Lamb Art Space (March 2023)
Farnham, United Kingdom

In Part II/II of this survey of Theo Papandreopoulos's exhibition Echo's Bones, Sunend will further examine Papandreopoulos's key themes through sculpture works made from testosterone powder and assemblage works incorporating military stickers and Nazi uniform trousers. Papandreopoulos's absurd juxtapositions and amplification of specific elements, reveal the tension of deviant eroticism embedded within standardised power structures. The works in this part investigate the role of physical fitness, politics, and religion within military systems and their broader influence on mainstream society, informed by Papandreopoulos's experiences growing up in the Greek Orthodox faith and serving in the Hellenic Army. 

Key references and methodology: In Part II of Sunend's survey of Echo's Bones, Papandreopoulos's exploration of masculinity and power is framed through minimalist aural works that evoke the subtle demands of "quiet strength" inherent in middle-class values (Mosse, 1996). Referencing Rousseau’s argument that physical vigour fosters intellectual growth and moral worth (Mosse, 1996), the works also engage with the militaristic ideals of fitness and moral courage, as seen in German Gymnastics. Sunend connects this discourse to the semiotics of military power, where religion and politics historically converge with violence, creating tensions between unequal masculinities (Kovitz, 2003), while reflecting on the fluid and complex nature of male identity, as explored through the works of Beckett and Bacon. Read

Theo Papandreopoulos

Exhibited at Lion & Lamb Art Space (March 2023)
Farnham, United Kingdom

Sunend presents a deep two-part survey of Theo Papandreopoulos's solo exhibition Echo's Bones. In Part I Sunend examines his deconstruction of seemingly banal objects critically engaging with the complex relationship between masculinity and structures of power. This part focuses on his works Dragon Skin (2023) and Untitled (2023), wall pieces which incorporate military epaulettes, and introduces his curatorial distinction between ‘main’ and ‘supporting’ works by looking at the installation dispersed throughout the gallery. Papandreopoulos re-engineers objects associated with authority and hierarchy through absurd juxtapositions and amplification of specific elements, evoking both menace and vulnerability while revealing the tension of the deviant eroticism embedded within authoritarian standardised uniformity.

Key references and methodology: In Part 1 of Sunend's deep survey of Echo's Bones, the deconstruction of objects is framed through the lens of military masculinity, drawing on Paul R. Higate’s (2003) analysis of rank and hierarchy as central psychological structures in both military and civilian contexts. Papandreopoulos’s works, including Dragon Skin(2023) and Untitled(2023) military epaulette pieces, exemplify the complex interplay between authority and masculinity, as highlighted by his manipulation of scale, form, and weight, a concept discussed in Dawn Ades’s (1996) essay in Hayward Gallery’s “Art and Power.” His re-engineered objects create a tension akin to the "mythic allure" of Francis Bacon’s transformations, as noted by David Sylvester (2000). Rachel Woodward’s (2003) insights into military identity formation inform our understanding of Papandreopoulos’s interrogation of masculinity's boundaries, drawing parallels with Klaus Theweleit’s (1977) concept of the split between the male exterior and female interior. Papandreopoulos’s exposé of the eroticism embedded within authoritarian forms, pushing them into uncanny, unsettling realms, parallels with Tim Benton’s (1996) critique of authoritarian aesthetics. And the eroticism as individual expression as witnessed in Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom is described by Jane Gallop (1981). And the tension between individual expression and collective power, as articulated by David Elliot (1996) in “The Battle for Art,” helps to frame Papandreopoulos’s exploration of the contradictions inherent in constructing idealised masculinity. Finally, Com Toibin (2015) essay on Francis Bacon’s late paintings’ “Spirit and Substance” helps us introduce Papandreopoulos’s installation which like his practice is influenced by Samuel Beckett’s absurdism conveyed by paring key elements down to a minimum. Read