Ties That Bind
EXHIBITION
26/09 - 03/11
Museum of Contemporary Art
Grand Opening: 26/09 at 20:00
Curators: Barbara Gregov, Lovro Japundžić, Lea Vene
Let us start by “zooming out” and observing the infinite interdependencies enveloping our planet. We witness natural resources, their movements and exploitation, the trajectory of consumption, vast growth, violent conflicts – a diverse range of interrelated events.
Let us then move closer, zoom back on us. From the moment of our birth, we become attached to and dependent on different structures and relationships, from the state to family. They shape or influence the ways we connect to the world — to (other) bodies, beings, ideas, phenomena, technologies, environment… While each attachment could bring joy, comfort, or safety, they might also feel constraining or suffocating. Affection or love may disguise power and dominance. Beneath kind expressions such as “I care for you” or “We can help you,” may lie a desire to manipulate, use, own, or control.
So, If I depend on you, and you depend on me, then none of us should feel stuck with the other, yet we should find ways to stick together. To nourish bonds that excite us and to cut ties with ones that diminish or damage either of us.
If I depend on you and you depend on me, and if we not only want to survive but also thrive, then it is up to us to create a more hospitable, caring world, one capable of sustaining and nurturing all forms of life.
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The exhibition Ties That Bind presents works of seven artists who embrace, challenge or rediscover various forms of attachments and connections within different social structures and relationships we are involved in.
Coming from a place of healing or transformation is work by Angyvir Padilla Home Unfoldable Home. Flashbacks. Using mainly archival photography of her family home in Venezuela, she explores intimate family bonds that shape our identities even from afar. Her mother’s photographes are transformed into sculptures in which depicted motifs, always veiled by paraffin, appear almost too blurred to discern. Faded imagery layered with different textures accentuates artist’s relationships with photographic memory and connected questions of belonging.
Archival images translated in new contexts are present in the work The Mummy Eye by Donja Nasseri. In this ongoing project the artist works with the collection of the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum (RJM) in Cologne, revealing an intricate web of relationships that are the result of human misconduct or violent colonial past. The mummy eye is the first object from the series that she exhibits in different formats, combining sophisticated 3D printing techniques with more traditional watercolors.
Interwoven ties where past meets the present are visible in Dev Dhunsi‘s work Tales They Don’t Tell You. Through untold mythical tales from the Vedas, including a story of gay love, Dhunsi speaks about broader connections between world geographies. Combining cylindrical water sculptures and images woven into textiles, the work emphasizes the symbolic power of water that connects and divides us.
Both Jan Durina and Ihar Hancharuk identify in their works how public opinion is being shaped by political discourse which often grows us apart instead of bringing us together. While in his work I Was Going to Be a Great Person Jan Durina shows how hate-fueled rhetoric results in concrete violent actions directed mainly towards queer people, in What if I am a spy? Ihar Hancharuk focuses more on tensions, suspicions and public paranoia that through images instantly become palpable. These works bring to light complicated political situations where control, distrust and hate dominate and define mass consciousness. Wrongly shaped values easily become part of hostile national identities where there is no room for solidarity or genuine care.
Disillusionment with existing attachments can make us tweak our parameters and set our values straight, allowing ourselves to imagine new forms of kinship that could exist beyond familiar social structures, relationships, species… Or grow from within their loopholes. Between Two Trees, There Are Many Worlds is a work by Sheung Yiu which explores the entanglement of biological and technological ecologies in contemporary life. By using the ongoing bark beetle infestation in Northern Europe, this extensive project compares the optical scientific measurements of the forest with the chemical sensing of the living creatures in the woods. The video essay, which serves as a focal point of the installation, sheds light to limitations of human-centered view on landscape that neglects interspecies communication.
Thinking about communication in a more speculative way is a series of photographs Off the map by Sasha Chaika. They explore new ways of kinship that are not dependent on language which can feel limiting when imposing labels or further strengthening stigmas. Chaika tries to capture and visualize different affective connections that circulate between subjects, relying more on haptic experiences than predetermined definitions.
The exhibition Ties That Bind provides space to reassess and move beyond familiar ties. Selected projects observe our interconnected world and its failure to acknowledge potential of new kinships or previously neglected ones. Exploring new and meaningful ways to belong, connect, or experience closeness seems like a prerequisite of living and hopefully reconciling our damaged world(s).