Voracious green-and-purple creepers infested Zoe Williams’s recent show, evoking predatory tubers and feelers. The show’s title, “Tendresse Tendril,” pointed to the artist’s interest in etymological roots as well as physical ones. Both words come from the Latin tener, which means “soft” or “delicate.” While tenderness was not always obvious in the works on view, tendrils ran rampant—sprouting up in the form of sea anemones (real and digitally animated), Medusa-like ceramic locks, and long wormy glass tears.

The centerpiece of the show was the seven-minute video Tendresse Tendril (Worms’ Meat) (

In her book Everybody (2021), Olivia Laing describes corporeality as involving a “system of control and punishment that is invisible until you happen to transgress it in some way.” Maja Bajevic would likely agree. Born in Sarajevo, she arrived Paris in the 1990s and remained through the Yugoslav Wars. Since then, she has been grappling with the shattering effects of violence on personal identity. In new works created for her exhibition “Echos,” Bajevic conjured, through video and installation, the anxiety stemming from collective sociopolitical crises (so many to choose from). Sampling from