David Seidman - The Ghost Girls
solo feature
August 4th - 29th, 2017
For his second Arch Enemy solo exhibition, The Ghost Girls brings together an anthology of female-driven stories from the past 150 years, each one self-contained within a single piece by the Philadelphia-based dark fantasy painter and illustrator.
David Seidman’s inspiration for this new collection is slightly different than some of his previous work. While in the past David has drawn inspiration and reference from the truly supernatural, like in his 2016 solo show, Rapture, The Ghost Girls is a collection of strange tales that took place in the real world, from Cora The Medium, to the Fox Sister’s and their role in influencing the birth of modern day spiritualism, to the show’s title piece, The Ghost Girl: a true story about a female workforce working in a factory for self-laminating radium based paint. At first, the women relished in the fact that their teeth, lips and even clothes would glow, but the radium was actually slowly poisoning them to the point that their bones would become brittle. These women fought tirelessly in courts against corporations that disregarded employee safety in exchange for better profits, and their efforts continue to protect workers today.