Joi Murugavell
Itching & Scratching

When you get something you’ve wanted for a long time, it can feel strangely unreal. The waiting and the wanting become such familiar states that they start to feel more real than the thing itself. For a long time, when I first noticed that my work might actually be communicating with me, I ignored it. That went on for almost as long as I had been hoping to make work that could speak back to me.

This exhibition sits within that space between itching and scratching—between desire and the early stages of listening. It marks a period where I found myself blocking my own presence from myself, as though trying not to fully arrive in what I was making. Sometimes it felt like the sound of a nail in an empty tin can—loud, awkward, and trying too hard to be heard, by myself and by others.

What shifted was learning to stay with a kind of clumsy honesty. Becoming comfortable with how messy and unpolished that process can be, and with the awareness that any sense of clarity might be temporary, or cyclical, or something that comes and goes.

Art, for me, doesn’t come from a loud voice, even if it sometimes appears that way. It is never really finished, despite the way it is presented in a gallery space. And more often than not, it becomes a kind of mirror—quietly reflecting back whoever is looking.

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