It seems like everyone was Napoleon or Joan of Arc in a previous incarnation. Bypassing the usual past-life regression through hypnosis or consulting a medium, collaborating artists Nellie King Solomon and Jenny Muskopf lured volunteers with promises of booze, handed out pencils, and had them go way, way back. Then they illustrated a selection of their narratives, creating a composite soul transmuted through time and various bodies in "12 of Our 84 Possible Past Lives." The title refers to the belief of the Hindu-based Brahma Kumaris (BKs) that humans are born 84 times in a 5,000-year cycle. The exhibit is the culmination of their artist in residency program, after toiling for three months in a cramped jail cell beneath the gallery, a space once occupied by a BDSM store. (How's that for a past life?) Exploring the reincarnation of a single consciousness in a succession of corporeal forms in painting on Mylar scrolls, Muskopf depicts bodies from antiquity to modern times strewn across Solomon's inky wheels, "the massive yet invisible forces that travel through our world and consciousness."
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