La Salle des Taureux

<p dir="ltr">Research Background </p><p dir="ltr">La Salle des Taureux emerges from Dwyer and Yore's 2023 Glasshouse/Stonehouse residency in Chenaud, France, where they studied the Lascaux cave replicas and their reproductive logic. This collaborative installation responds to the Paleolithic painted caves, which were closed in 1955 due to visitor damage and subsequently replicated multiple times to satisfy public demand for embodied encounters with mysterious ancient imagery. The work combines wall painting, sculptural installation, sound, and performance remnants to create a queer, pop-shamanic pilgrimage site that explores how significant images, symbols, and practices transform through ritual re-making across vast temporal spans. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Contribution </p><p dir="ltr">This collaboration advances understanding of how iconic forms and ritualized bodily experiences evolve through repetition and appropriation. Dwyer's occult-inflected mysticism intersects with Yore's Catholic-kitsch sensibility and Warholian grasp of ritual reproduction, creating new methodologies for engaging with deep cultural history. The work reimagines Lascaux's enigmatic "shaft scene"—depicting a bird-human figure with prominent erection—alongside references to shamanic practices, queer activism (ACT UP's pink triangle), and folk-religious traditions (fèves from King Cake). By tracing the bull's metamorphosis into abstract symbols and letter forms (aleph to the letter A), the installation demonstrates how sacred images continuously transform while retaining vital significance, proposing that contemporary popular culture participates in ancient mystical practices whether consciously acknowledged or not. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Significance </p><p dir="ltr">La Salle des Taureux offers critical insights into how art spaces might facilitate transcendent experience in an era of polite, distanced observation. The work addresses tensions between intense shamanic practices—originally created in altered states within claustrophobic, low-oxygen, psychoactive environments—and contemporary white cube aesthetics. This research questions whether the continuous churn of cultural repetition and metamorphosis can sustain genuine spiritual engagement through material and visual culture, revealing how the deep past echoes through present-day forms of consumption, devotion, and embodied performance.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p>