Artists

Phyrexian & Amelia (Anja Ripoll, she/her & Tristan Cubero, he/him) develop speculative worlds through a shared artistic practice. Their work begins with conversations, writing and a process of imagining together. From these exchanges, they extract fragments of larger fictional universes, which take form through ceramics, painting, drawing and sculpture.

These worlds are shaped by reflections on collapse. For Phyrexian & Amelia, apocalypse is not simply a future event; it can describe processes that have been unfolding for centuries. A sense of ending may begin with the exhaustion or destruction of resources, be they ecological, social or spiritual. Their fictions move freely between what has happened, what is happening and what might still come.

Each work offers only a partial view. Landscapes shift from microscopic to planetary scales; organic forms mutate, architectures appear and disappear, and traces of human activity remain. Together, these fragments belong to a world whose complete story exists somewhere beyond the work itself.

What kinds of images feed into the worlds you create, and what are some references you keep coming back to?
Our imagination draws mainly from popular culture, from the more “geek” references, and from our experience as a generation that grew up with television, video games, films, cartoons, and so on. We are ultimately much less influenced by traditional artistic or bourgeois culture. Images from popular culture provide important material for building our own worlds.

Our references range from Gothic and Baroque architecture to religious painting and places of worship from different traditions, as well as horror films, graffiti and tattooing. We are particularly interested in the ways these forms generate imaginaries and atmospheres, and create particular relationships to the body, the sacred and space. These references, sometimes very distant from one another, naturally intersect in our practice and contribute to the construction of our worlds.