Of Each Absense

31.10.2023 – 02.11.2023
 

News of absence reaches us daily: Glaciers are thinning and retreating, leaving scars in the summer landscape. Lakes and rivers carry too little water. Droughts stunt harvests. In Winter it is the snow, whose absence leaves us with a brown, dirty landscape. In contrast, there is a surplus: of floods that wash away land and roads, paralyzing temperatures. Absence and presence are out of a natural balance. “The world dies of each absence”, writes Belgian philosopher Vinciane Despret. She recounts (man-​made) extinction of migratory pigeons as part of a chronicle of extinction of humanity: “Every absence is a fragment of a slow dying. Everything that disappears is an irreparable loss for the earth and for humanity.” This dramatic disappearance can be applied to the climate crisis and the loss of the world as we know it.
 Absence refers to inaction, apathy and a growing dilemma: We seek to understand, we strive to learn, but we seem to lack capacity to act. The potential of the world is limited by an accumulation of absences: Absence can be read as the blank space of a speculative future, something missing, a world that is not yet realised. We shape the “not yet there”, the future present, with actions of our present presence. Art and its production are full of contradictions and complexities, especially in illuminating pressing questions of the present. In other words, artistic responses to the climate crisis might not be the clear-​cut messages we expect or demand from Science, but are rather intricately linked to knowledge and discourse about contemporary crises.
 The works in the exhibition refer to visibility and speculative perspectives in the presence of complex processes. They reflect on complex nature-​human relationships and are activists, in the sense that they place us in relation to nature, to our fellow human beings, reflect on economy and politics and challenge the language we use, through our ability to transform knowledge and to make it accessible in different ways. 

                                                                                              – Judith Welter 

Roots, Relations, Recollections

The project is still on going.
 
«Roots, Relations, Recollections» explores the multifaceted concept of home and the diverse experiences of individuals and communities with Migration Backgrounds in Zurich.
we explore question related to the term home with a focus on the different realities of people with a Migration Background living in Zurich, which is highly diverse, including Immigration, Transmigration, Diaspora, and Exile.

When society asks how many migrants live in Switzerland, we would like to ask WHEN and WHO? We are talking about individuals and communities, not points on a graph.

We collect the experiences, recollections, and memories of people.

Together, we try to create "nearby" the experiences and sensations of each person, we won't dare to speak "about" nor "for" them. By acknowledging our foreignness, we approach 'otherness' with sincerity, equality, and respect, thus reflecting the postcolonial perspective and transnational of our project.

The has two focus points: How to understand "intercultural" from a non-white gaze;
Interviews with participants. 
Participants are highly diverse:
1. Student transmigrants.
2. (il/legal) working immigrants.
3. One or both parents are immigrants.
4. People come due to political reasons, or climate reasons.
5. Migrant trans woman. 

loslassen – loswerden

Sinnlichkeit im gekachelten Waschraum 

17.03.2023 – 02.04.2023
 

The tiled washroom triggers feelings and fantasies. What did it feel like in there in the past? Why do we sometimes have to let go of what we have grown to love? Or is it rather a question of discovering or rediscovering the old, making us think, feeling and searching, breathing life into yum for the last time in this form. More than 40 international artists from different disciplines have responded to the location with their works.

NORMALITÄTEN

14.12.2021 – 27.02.2022 

Ausstellungen - Frauenmuseum Bonn

Was ist normal? Was verbinden wir mit dem Begriff Normalität? Und welche Normen bestimmen unsere Wahrnehmung und unser Denken? Diesen elementaren wie weitreichenden Fragen gingen Studierende der Hochschule der bildenden Künste (HBK) Essen in einem Projektseminar nach, dessen Ergebnisse nun im Frauenmuseum Bonn zu sehen sind. Die Teilnehmer*innen aus verschiedenen Fachgebieten – Malerei/Grafik, Bildhauerei und Fotografie/Medienkunst – greifen Themen aus unterschiedlichsten Bereichen, vom menschlichen Körper über Medienbilder bis zur Kunst selbst, auf und erkunden auf mal provokante, mal subtile Weise die darin angelegten Konventionen. 

IM TAKT. 

06.05.2022 – 16.06.2022
Yue Wu. Im Takt. – +BASEMENT
(Technic support: Jakob Fleischer)
 

"Time is an abstract concept.  
What it means, what can be understood as the essence of time, is a question of perspective. 
A physicist will define time differently than a philosopher. And I am sure each of us will, what we see in time, how we understand and experience it, differently. 
 
In art, the examination of time is essential, not least because of its existential dimension (origin - life - death) that we associate with it. It is a driving force and inspiration at all times. Therefore, every work of art is also a statement against senseless transience.  
 
In Yue Wu's artistic work, the examination of time is a central theme. Following the philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson, she understands the individual experience of time not as a defined period of time with a point in time at the beginning and end but as duration. The ongoing processual sequence shapes the experience of time.  
What is essential to Yue Wu is precisely this realization that time is conceived as something coherent in sequence. 
In the exhibition, Im Takt, she shows four works inspired by this idea of time."
                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                    Milo Köpp