The Daily Practice of Escaping

Installation view of JJJJJerome Ellis at Secession, Vienna, 2026, : Oliver Ottenschläger JJJJJerome Ellis’s exhibition at the Secession Vienna, An unfinished calendar that commemorates slaves escaping their enslavers, 1673–1886, continues for about one more week. A central element are the 72 pages of Ellis’s calendar corresponding to the dates of the show, on which they record the names of people whose escapes from slavery were documented by their enslavers in newspaper advertisements: I’ve been working for the last few years on a kind of (cccc)calendar. So the core idea is that each month and each day would be paired with the name of an enslaved (pppppp)person who (eeeeeeee)escaped their enslaver on that day. Of course, sometimes they were (rrrr)recaptured. We often (dd)don’t know. All these names I encountered were in newspaper advertisements in the US, UK, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada. So the idea I’ve been having is that every single day of the year is the anniversary…

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