Art exhibition: Roll To Tie
It is my pilot project based on my ongoing curatorial research focused on identity, origins, and memories of past vs present. There was a series of exhibitions located in the intimate space of my home where I have a long dark corridor and spare room.
Artist Claudia Virginia Vitari, Invisible Cities, 20212, Janine Mapurunga Photography
The first artist contributing to my project is Claudia Virginia Vitari who is a Berlin-based artist presenting her series of artworks, Invisible Cities, 2012. Vitari´s project is about Radio Nikosia in Barcelona, the first Spanish radio program that is organized by people with a diagnosis of mental disorders.
Taking into consideration the last nearly 3 years of our lives and how our mental health is affected by being confined into limited spaces of our homes, Vitari´s installation tells stories of people who struggled with mental health long before the pandemic. The installation draws attention to the stigma of mental health patients being forced into pigeon holes from which is no escape.
Cladia Vitari, Invisible Cities, 2012, photography Marcelina Wellmer
Temporary Space Berlin, Project Roll To Tie
The second artist participating in my project is Berlin/New York-based painter Suzanne Levesque. Through paintings, drawings, and sometimes installations Levesque analyzes human behavior by scrutinizing and collecting fragments of consciousness. Collecting and processing them almost like specimens.
The artist made an installation in collaboration with the Galerie Schloss Parz in Austria MÜDE BIN ICH, 2017. The artist focused her attention on beds as pivotal objects of the human existence. In a bed humans are made, born, heal and every night we go to bed to sleep and recharge and in the end, we die in a bed. We are at our most vulnerable in bed.
Today, the installation exists as a video on a loop inside an old-fashioned TV set from the time period from the artists' own childhood. The video was shot in collaboration with Kaiser Films.
A sizable part of my research is focused on identity, past memories vs present, migration, and our origins and because all of that is reflected in our homes, my starting point is a home-based art space. The places we grew up, moved into, or created by ourselves are mirrors of where we are from, our upbringing, and the location of our origins.
The majority of the artworks derive from the personal experience of the artists and if I am asking artists to share private parts of their life then offering the intimacy of my home is a fair deal. I have come across stories told by the artists about people who had to make difficult choices in a contrast to popular beliefs of a given society and deal with the consequences. I have opted to give a voice to such stories.
How do we perceive our identity and how is it influenced by our surroundings such as gender, age, geographical location, and socio-economical conditions?
Claudia Vitari, Invisible Cities, 2012, Temporary Space Berlin
Project Roll To Tie, photography Marcelina Wellmer
The path we walk is not a wide road full of bright light but quite the contrary. It looks like a narrow dark passage with a sharp turn where at one point in your life you stop caring about other´s people opinion or their perceptions of you and you just follow your own way.
That´s why used the corridor in my home as a representation of a passage of our life. In the beginning, it is quite narrow and straight forward but as we get older and grow as people then a perception of who we are gets wider and more fluid like the corridor.
Claudia Vitari, Invisible Cities, 2012, Temporary Space Berlin
Project Roll To Tie, photography Marcelina Wellmer
Nevertheless, we keep rolling and going one more day again and again until we end up tied to a specific, location, people's attitude, or lifestyle.
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I don´t want to fall into a trap of homemade art eg. portraits of dogs or spouses. Then I would like to avoid using identity as an identification such as fingerprints or like a search tool or magnifying glass let alone encouraging false pride in who we are. No mirrors but more of a statement.
I still want to adhere to my curatorial direction. The identity delves into individuals and I would like to encourage other individuals to open their private spaces to art projects and share them with the audience.
Roll To Tie is a micro event as it is accommodated in the intimate space of my home. There were 2 artists overlapping each other´s time to gain the sensation of rolling. The exhibition took a place in physical space and was documented.