“Fight-or-Flight” by Jill Mulleady was on view from 25 September to 29 December, 2019 at Swiss Institute, New York.
Tucked inside Swiss Institute’s East Village location—a former Chase Bank branch turned contemporary art space—Jill Mulleady’s “Fight-or-Flight” unfolds like a fever dream. The exhibition channels the fraught psychological and environmental tensions of our time through allegorical paintings and sculptural interventions that merge myth, memory, and modern ruin. Housed in a building steeped in financial history, the show excavates layers of institutional complicity, ecological collapse, and human vulnerability with unsettling precision.
Mulleady, a Uruguayan-born, Los Angeles-based painter, is known for her richly narrative tableaux that oscillate between beauty and horror, realism and fantasy. Her practice often involves transforming exhibition spaces into immersive environments, blending architectural elements with painted scenes to create layered mise-en-scènes. In “Fight-or-Flight” , she leans fully into this approach, using SI’s former bank vault and industrial pipeline to amplify the conceptual gravity of her large-scale painting.
The centerpiece of “Fight-or-Flight” is “A Fantasy of Transcendence and a Preoccupation with Downfall and Ruin” (2019), a monumental oil on linen painting that dominates the main gallery. The work features a reclining giant sprawled across a desolate island, his body fused with the land itself. Waterfalls spill from his limbs into turquoise seas, while a sky reminiscent of Munch’s “The Scream” swirls overhead. Mulleady draws inspiration from Renaissance depictions of earthly paradise, particularly Bruegel’s “The Land of Cockaigne” , reimagining it through a lens of contemporary excess and ecological decay. The figure’s hollow eyes and the digital tablet resting beside him suggest both omnipotence and futility—an emblem of unchecked consumption and isolation.
Nearby, “Pipeline” (2019)—a section of an actual crude-oil transport pipe—rests on the floor like a relic of industry. A single rat, meticulously painted inside the cylinder, appears only when viewed from a specific angle, echoing Holbein’s “Ambassadors” and its hidden skull. This subtle yet potent gesture links the destructive cycles of capitalism and environmental degradation, suggesting that we are all complicit in a system teetering toward collapse.
At the far end of the gallery, “Vault Room” (2019) transforms a small chamber into a darkened bank vault. Behind a barred gate emblazoned with “FIRST NATIONAL BANK AND TRUST COMPANY,” an ATM lies open and vandalized, its inner workings exposed. The installation feels post-apocalyptic, as if we’ve stumbled upon the aftermath of a financial reckoning. Light spills harshly from above, casting ominous shadows that heighten the sense of trespass and unease.
Fight-or-Flight roots out fantasies, motivations and fears hidden in the building’s walls in order to depict a mythological landscape of polarization and crisis.
Curatorially, “Fight-or-Flight” succeeds in weaving together disparate elements—historical references, spatial interventions, and symbolic motifs—into a cohesive and provocative whole. The decision to restore part of the gallery to its original status as a bank vault enhances the thematic resonance, grounding the show in real-world power structures. While some viewers may find the lack of explanatory material challenging, it ultimately reinforces Mulleady’s intent: to present an uncomfortable, ambiguous experience rather than a didactic one.
In its totality, “Fight-or-Flight” is a powerful confrontation with the crises of our era—ecological, economic, and ethical. It does not offer answers but instead invites reflection on our complicity and potential for change. Through her layered allegories and site-specific installations, Mulleady crafts a space where myth and reality collide, leaving us unsettled but newly aware.
