Joi Murugavell
Finding Mikey

The first thing to know about Joi Murugavell is that she is reluctant to translate her work into fixed words, on the understanding that today’s truth can become tomorrow’s contradiction. What follows, then, is only one reading—partial, and inevitably incomplete.

The exhibition Finding Mikey refers to Murugavell’s ongoing relationship with Mikey, who scans and documents her paintings. Over time, she began embedding hidden messages and small clues within the works, placed specifically for him to discover. Across this new body of work, every surface invites close looking, as if something might be waiting to be found just beneath the surface. Only Mikey knows which details were intended for him alone.

From the outside, however, it is impossible to distinguish what belongs to Mikey, what gestures toward friends and collaborators, or what might be part of an open-ended visual language shared with no one in particular. Quotes, cartoon figures, toys, and shapes accumulate without hierarchy—each one potentially meaningful, each one equally available.

In this way, the paintings operate like a playful system of attention. Brushstrokes, symbols, and fragments of humour sit side by side, often landing like private jokes that you are briefly invited into. The works privilege specificity over universality: they do not speak to everyone in the same way, but instead seem to speak directly, individually, to whoever is looking.

No one is excluded from the invitation. The work remains open, generous, and knowingly playful—offering meaning that shifts depending on where, and with whom, it is encountered.