TRAUMA Beograd
The body does not forgive
A travelling exhibition about traumas caused by war experiences, gender discrimination, xenophobia, violence
Der Körper vergisst nicht
Eine Wanderaussstellung über Traumata bedingt durch Kriegserfahrungen, Geschlechter Diskriminierung, Fremdenfeindlichkeit, Gewalt
KÜNSTLER.INNEN / ARTIST
Guadalupe Aldrete * Mila Balzhieva * Paula Flores * Kyungrim Lim Jang * Hubert Hasler * Gabriel Virgilio Luciani * Marko Markovic * Vera Klimentyeva * Isidora Krstic * Jelena Micic * Bojana Fuzinato – Stamenkovic * Natalia Papaeva * Laura Rambelli *
Curator Denise Parizek
“The mind, however, keeps turning to the trauma – as if there were a splinter there that needs to be reintegrated. This also coincides with the observations of modern psychology. When a trauma is triggerd, i.e. something reminds the affected person of the situation (even such small things as smells, colours, words), their body system numbs itself. They no longer feel arms or legs, report ‘falling out of their body’, faint – anything to avoid experiencing the same pain again. The situation that can never be fully told, that cannot be woven into one’s life narrative, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, always interfering but never available, filling everything up and always empty.”
Kim de l`Horizon Blutbuch / Dumont
KÜNSTLERISCHE POSITIONEN / Artistic Positions
GUADALUPE ALDRETE
Its, itz, ytz, ix, hix
2022 | Performance
Inheriting precarity,
precarity concealed and manifested in skin,
in its color, its texture, its weight…
The skin conceals and envelops, hides and protects, therefore it holds secrets and magic*.
People carry the history and heritage of their family and ancestors on and under their skin. The wealth they carry on their backs mysteriously hides the treasure they carry inside. They end up building landscapes off abundance that are not meant for them, that are not meant for everyone. Some people would do anything to get wealth, even break the container that holds it.
*Mayan language and ideology. Chilam Balam.
MILA BALZHIEVA
Video-Installation
Moving behind the trees, blending with the environment. Rooting consciousness deep into the forest. Reading hidden symbols. Walking on an invisible path and transforming into something else; a particle of a unified organism.
Not many of us remember how to behave in forests. We enter it as conquerors making its space and resources work for us, barely trying to adjust and blend with it. But there are places where one should move carefully, and if one moves even a stone, they should return it where it belongs. If not to respect the environment of these spots, every unseen entity inhabiting these places will leave, and there will be no chance to contact them again. Forest itself is a living being full of mysteries where everything is connected and entangled. What will happen when one enters the forest respectfully and quietly, trying to unify with every living creature and entity? Will the forest show its hidden life and secret messages?
NATALIA GUROVA
Sculpture / Drawing 2022
The project that draws inspiration from Heracleum Sphondylium. Two of many invasive species that threaten the balance of the European ecosystem. Specifically, Natalia focuses on the appearance of Heracleum commonly called Giant Hogweed which is an impressive-looking plant yet potentially toxic as its sap can cause photodermatitis or photosensitivity.
The choice to deal with these plants was coincidentally organic as we have both seen these plants in Europe, Austria and in the Russian steppe respectively. Upbringing of these alien species and their biological kineses highlights accidental but intriguing historical parallels and reflects the current geopolitical state on a global scale.
The purpose of the work is to open a dialogue for urgency, exercise criticism, and question legitimacy, power, and conquest/intrusion while simultaneously allowing issues of identity and immigration to preserve.
HUBERT HASLER
Photography 2021
“It’s the biggest species extinction since the dinosaurs disappeared”
Christoph Heinrich, CEO WWF Germany
There is no end in sight to the downward spiral. In its updated Red List of July 9, 2020, the World Conservation Union IUCN now records 32,441 animal and plant species as threatened. That’s more than ever before.
“We humans play a dangerous dual role in the global species Gau. On the one hand, we are destroying species habitats, fueling species extinction. On the other hand, species diversity is the basis for functioning ecosystems, on which we humans ourselves ultimately depend,” Heinrich said. “An intact and diverse natural world gives us food, clean water and other raw materials, regulates the climate and acts as a bulwark against diseases and pandemics. The destruction of nature is primarily at the expense of billions of people in the global South, and their lives often depend directly on the use of natural resources.”
Conservation organizations, fridays for future, Greta Thunberg, scientists of different fields, all of them have been warning for years, decades, about the devastating consequences of the neoliberal exploitation of our planet as well as the irresponsible waste of resources.
Authors like Margaret Atwood or T.C. Boyle fictionalized in dystopian novels about functional new social structures, chickens without heads, mainly consisting of coveted breast meat, problems with Neopyths and Neozoa.
Natural disasters accumulate, one pandemic follows another, people starve to death due to climate change, and we watch.
Hubert Hasler has long been concerned with Neophytes, using them as an allegory for xenophobia, integrating them photographically and sculpturally in the contemporary art context.
In his new, two-part work “Fleischbeschau & Schweinschakal” on the presentation of the hunted. For Hasler, this is a revelation of the voyeuristic in the struggle against/with/over nature.
Wild boars multiply in our forests unregulated, become in some places a plague due to lack of prey predators.
Out of fear of epidemics, border fences are erected as if a bacterium could be kept out. We find similar reactions in the current fight against pandemics.
The jackal is also an uninvited immigrant. Although jackals do very well in man-made cultural landscapes, they are classified as an enemy by the hunting community.
Who determines what is alien and therefore dangerous to us? And is this assessment subject to the spirit of the times?
Denise Parizek
ISIDORA KRSTIC
The Artist’s Country Club Dream
Video, essay, object 2023
For as long as I could remember, I had this dream to become a member of a country club. I would play golf or tennis for hours on warm Sunday afternoons and have fancy drinks and dinner afterwards with people that I like. We would frolic next to some pool. Mind you, I never golfed, but it always seemed so decadent to hit a tiny ball repeatedly across acres of barren land. I like decadent things.
During the week, it would be tennis with the husband, who, you guessed it, also has artist meets country club member affinities. For our bi-weekly couple’s tennis game, we would dress in white. We would sparr and let it all out on the court, returning happily to our lives.
In questioning my motivations, I came to the conclusion that a sense of predictable comfort seems so appealing. Comfort is a fraught topic, we strive for it in many ways, but we also need challenges and moments of discomfort to feel alive.
A potential process of entering a country club from my own standpoint can be seen as a transgressive act – by doing so I would break through class structures and exclusive societal groups. It would be a way to stir up societal roles and relations as well as whom we expect to be in these roles. I would be the artist who golfs. The only problem was, that there was nowhere to start. I lacked the necessary capital (annual membership fees are exorbitantly high) and connections.
My first attempt at this was contacting a very fancy country club in Vienna close to where I live, asking if I could film a new video work there. The video would involve releasing yellow smoke on the golf course in an attempt to erase my body on the course itself, and thus symbolically erase my country club dream. I never got an answer.
The presented video is the closest thing – a slowly unfolding preview of a golf car collecting practice balls. Filmed through an ever so symbolic crack in the fence outlining the course. The driver that was collecting the balls saw me filming and instead of getting me in trouble, he silently gifted me a golf ball. It was as if only for a moment, we perfectly understood each other.
The goal is still to become a member of a country club.
GABRIEL VIRGILIO LUCIANI
Breakup
5’44
2023
Editing and filming by Vanessa Pey
Additional editing by Clàudia del Barrio
Idea, concept and performance: Gabriel Virgilio Luciani
Special thanks: Sílvia Cabrera
Breakup is a corporal aria birthed on a simmering hot day in the attic of late 19th Century Catalan modernist house. After seeing the Andrzej Żuławski film, Possession (1981), I wanted to approach the topic of a breakup. Feeling uprooted, delirious, alone, forgotten, abandoned, I felt Isabelle Adjani’s gestures came from a place of disjunction. A rupture between wanting to leave a man and yet wanting to save her family; and at the same time wanting to mutate and disappear. The friction between the desires becomes unbearable. Here the convulsions and contortions mimic what the dance the heart does in a complex relationship. After a period of numbness, betrayal, breakup, anger, come anxious pulsations and tricky positions, laced feelings and contradictory movements.
PLAULA FLORES
ViICARIOUS TEARS Installation und Video
Rivers that flow over skin, over seeds that should have been born. Roots, torn out and thrown into the ocean where they can’t reach the ground and are ever condemned to float until they disintegrate. But there are always remains that can be reintegrated from the tears that come from the ocean. It’s the attempt to catch a reflection from another reflection and keep it for perpetuity.
T-Shirts
OG Appropriation Vetemann (2018) is a project which questions the originality of things that are branded and those that aren’t. Does everything have to be branded to be original? What does making original art, reproducing the artwork, and signing the work mean today? Does the work need to be signed to be original? Should we consider artworks of the artist as a brand product of the artist-brand? To which extent is something an inspiration, appropriation, original, or fake, and how does our value system work within these strata? French clothing brand VETEMENTS has been posting cutting-edge questions on the fashion industry, which oftentimes are proposed through a brilliant twist. One of their past projects, <Official Fake> was held in South Korea, where the production and consumption of copy products of luxury labels are rampant. There, the head designer and the anonymous team have bought their own copies, readjusted some parts, and sold them back with the original price as a special event exclusive to the South Korean market.
“Luxury isn’t about price anymore,” said Gvasalia. (co-founder of Vetements)
“It’s about scarcity.” – W Magazine
Text Kyungrim Lim Jang
VERA KLIMENTYEVA
Saint Jacob / Saint James
Icon, 2023
In this work, she focuses on an Orthodox saint, Saint Jacob, who was tempted by the devil and committed terrible deeds. Through asceticism, however, he always succeeded in regaining God’s favour, culminating in his canonisation. As Philip Bloom states in his book “Submission”, we all believe in an angry, furious God who allows terrible deeds to be committed and then distributes his favours benevolently. The traumatic impact on our society can be seen every day, be it the atrocities still committed in the name of God and the church, be it power hierarchies established by churches or wars in the name of the Lord.
NATALIA PAPAEVA
HOW ARE YOU, 2019, VIDEO-PERFORMANCE
Every time I go back home, I see that something has changed. The image I have in my mind about the constellation of our household does not match reality anymore. You leave not only a space, but the daily routine of your family. You have been denied the chance to participate in social happenings. While we share joyful news, the painful moments have been hidden away. Grief is something to deal with by yourself.
MARKO MARKOVIC
Video / Photography 2022
LAURA RAMBELLI
PLACENTA
VIDEO
Das Video von Placenta, das in Pialassa Baiona (RA) stattfand, wird für die Dauer der Ausstellung durch das Loch in der Kapellentür sichtbar bleiben.
Die erste Performance fand 2018 während des Performance-Wochenendes in Wien in der Galerie 12-14 statt, die zweite, von der im Video erzählt wird, fand in Pialassa Baiona in der Lagune des Po-Deltas statt. Eine Performance, bei der die Künstlerin Laura Rambelli in einer Laderaumhütte in der Mitte der Lagune auf die Menschen wartete, um jedem Teilnehmer symbolisch seine eigene Plazenta und eine persönliche Botschaft zu überreichen.
Die Schauspielerin Chiara Li Vecchi führte sie auf einem für die Lagune typischen Boot auf die andere Seite der Barena.
Die Erforschung und Ausübung neuer Rituale, die den Menschen mit der Natur verbinden, nähren meine künstlerische Tätigkeit. Aus diesem Grund werde ich während meiner Performance für die Gäste eine symbolische, besondere und persönliche Plazenta schaffen, um die magische Verbindung wiederherzustellen, die nur die Plazenta geben kann.
Wir sind, wovon wir uns ernähren….
BOJANA FUžINATO / STAMENKOVć
“Private and/or Public” Soft sculpture 2022
Can we be aware of the line between private and public activity in our lives? Is that harder if the subject is the one who creates? Weaving in her room, did my grandmother ever think that by creating that piece of fabric on the loom, her life would go from a private to a public one (inaccessible to her at the time)? By transposing a piece of textile that I weave by hand into an object titled installation in space, I break through the thin line between the private and the public. I make the soft structure of the fabric stop, freezing it, making it hard as stone, so that the outside view can feel how it slides under my fingers, rounded and tender. The production of material on the loom is a very intimate physical moment in which energy moves harmoniously through our body and by repeating the same procedures produces a rhythmic sound with which thoughts relax. The procedure can be viewed as meditative, cathartic, but very private and intimate. Observed throughout history, weaving has been the product of those who spend most of their time at home, who take care of the family and mostly women’s work. For a long time, it had the characteristic of decorative art, the one that is less valuable compared to the art produced by the big names in art history, done mostly by the male gender. As a craft or decorative art, weaving remained in the intimate zone. With its softness, colors, seductive charm, we read it as a woman’s energy. When I shape such energy and publicly present it into an object, it becomes a political act.
CURRICULAE VITAE
Guadalupe Aldrete, früher bekannt als Lala Nomada, ist eine mexikanische multidisziplinäre Künstlerin mit Sitz in Wien. Geboren wurde sie in Mexico, sie studierte in den USA und an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Art & Science, Wien.
Mila Balziehva ist eine Künstlerin, die in Burjatien (Ostsibirien) geboren und aufgewachsen ist. Sie lebt und arbeitet in Wien, studiert auf der Universität für Angewandte Künste in Art & Science bei Virgil Widrich. Balziehva stellt international und national aus.
Paula Flores, geboren und aufgewachsen in Mexico. 2010-2014 BA in Visual Arts, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, México. 2014 Traditional Michoacan Ceramics with Master Potters. Seit drei Jahren studiert sie an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Art & Science, Wien.
Kyungrim Lim Jang (장경림, *1992, Seoul, Südkorea) ist eine Künstlerin, die in der westasiatischen Stadt Wien lebt und arbeitet. Das Leben als Ausländerin in Gemeinschaften unterschiedlicher Größenordnung – von Familien bis hin zu Gesellschaften – prägte ihr Interesse an der Konstruktion von Heimat und daran, wie sich die eingebettete Richtung eines Wunsches nach Zugehörigkeit in den zeitgenössischen Medien manifestiert. Sie erforscht, wie unausgesprochene Vereinbarungen durch performatives Sprechen und Schweigen aufrechterhalten und gebrochen werden. Sie verbringt oft Zeit damit, zu beobachten, was an den Kreuzungen von Grenzen, Identifikationen und den Erzählungen, die diese Unterscheidungen tragen, geschieht. Was während des Aufnahme- und Übersetzungsprozesses einer Erzählung verstärkt, gelöscht und verzerrt wird, und die Motive der Programmierung sind ebenfalls von großem Interesse für sie. Sie ist Mitinitiatorin des Künstlerkollektivs Slug and Saliva, zusammen mit Hannah Sakai. Das Kollektiv arbeitet mit geschriebenen und gesprochenen Ausdrücken, um die Kluft zwischen Klang und Bedeutung zu materialisieren. Sie ist Lehrbeauftragte an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien.
Isidora Krstic, geboren in Serbien, aufgewachsen in Südafrika, Universitätsabschlüsse in Belgrad (Malerei) und Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Art & Science, Wien. Sie lebt und arbeitet in Wien.
Vera Klimentyeva, geboren in Russland, Ausbildung in Moskau und an der Akadedemie der Bildende Künste Wien. Lebt und arbeitet in Wien. Mitglied des Artist Run Space Vienna, 12-14 contemporary.
GABRIEL VIRGILIO LUCIANI geboren in den USA, lebt und arbeitet er in Barcelona. Das Forschungsgebiet des Kurators Gabriel Virgilio Luciani liegt an der gasförmigen Schnittstelle von Neokorporealität, Poesie, Queer-Theorie, Magie und Objektaffekten.
Jelena Micic, geboren in Serbien, universitäre Ausbildung in Belgrad (Philosophie und Skandinavische Sprachen) und Akadedemie der Bildende Künste Wien. Lebt und arbeitet in Wien.
Bojana Fuzinato-Stamenkovic wurde in Serbien geboren, studiert seit 2012 in Belgrad für das Doktorat. Absolvierte den ecm Lehrgang an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien und lebt seit 2019 in Hamburg. Sie ist bildende Künstlerin, Kulturarbeiterin und Aktivistin auf dem Gebiet der Frauenrechte und des kulturellen Erwachens in unterentwickelten Gebieten.
Hubert Hasler, geboren in Bruck/Mur – Österreich, absolvierte die Schule für künstlerische Fotografie (Friedl Kubelka) in Wien und die Floristikmeisterschule in Straubing. Mitglied des Artist Run Space Vienna, 12-14 contemporary. Er lebt und arbeitet in Wien.
Denise Parizek studierte in Wien u.a. Kunstgeschichte und lebte während ihres Konrad Adenauer Stipendiums in Hamburg. Sie ist Mitglied des Artist Run Space Vienna 12-14 contemporary und kuratiert in Wien, Mexiko, Canada und auf dem Balkan.
Natalia Papaeva ist eine Künstlerin, die in Burjatien (Ostsibirien) geboren und aufgewachsen ist. Seit 2013 lebt und arbeitet sie in den Niederlanden. Ihre Kunstwerke nehmen hauptsächlich die Form von Performances und Videokunst an. Ausgangspunkt für Natalias Arbeit kann ein fantasievoller Dialog, ein Text oder eine konfrontative Erinnerung sein. Sie schloss 2018 ihr Studium an der Königlichen Kunstakademie in Den Haag mit der preisgekrönten Arbeit Yokhor ab. Im Jahr 2021 erhielt Natalia ein Mondriaan-Stipendium für aufstrebende Künstler. Im September 2022 wird Papaeva ihren Aufenthalt in der Rijksakademie in Amsterdam beginnen.
Laura Rambelli Kreative, Träumerin, Performerin, land art, Bildhauer, Maler und Grafiker. Ich schaffe Formen, die mit der menschlichen Natur, der Umwelt und der weiblichen Welt zu tun haben und die ich mit verschiedenen Materialien gestalte. Ich schlage Kunstinstallationen vor, die oft zu Erlebnissen für die Öffentlichkeit werden, bei denen sie Kunst erleben und der wilden Natur näher kommen können.
Creativa, sognatrice, performer, land artist, scultrice, pittrice e grafica. Creo forme legate alla natura umana, all’ambiente e al mondo femminile che plasmo con diversi materiali. Propongo installazioni artistiche che spesso diventano esperienze per il pubblico dove vivere l’arte e avvicinarsi alla natura selvaggia.
REFERENZEN / RIFERIMENTI
https://12-14.org/exhibitions/utopia-de-una-transformacion/
http://janarnoldgallery.com/?page=6#2
https://www.laurarambelli.com
https://www.tangent-projects.com/gabriel-virgilio-luciano-bio
https://pogmahon.com/exhibitions/%cf%84%cf%81%ce%b1%e1%bf%a6%ce%bc%ce%b1/