Groupshow / Future Watch
Curators: Ashik Zaman, Koshik Zaman
Participating artists: Kasra Alikhani, Victoria Verseau, Samaneh Reyhani, Helena Tan, Tobias Bradford, Ljubomir Popovic, Lydia Ericsson Wärn, Samaneh Roghani, Jonas Bentzer och Birt Berglund.
16 Apr - 8 Aug 2021
Kulturhuset
Sergels Torg, Norrmalm
111 57 Stockholm
About the exhibition:
There’s already an enormous disproportion between the amount of graduating artists at art schools and the opportunities that rest at hand. Only about two, at most three, handfuls locally really get a chance to prove their wings towards broader art audiences.
Sweden also in a certain sense (with exception of course) is quite centralized towards Stockholm, with a preference towards art schools located in Stockholm. That’s a problem.
Koshik Zaman: One thing we’ve always done with C-print is to shine light on emerging artists and adopt a gaze that goes beyond just the provincial. We’ve always tried to overlap various corners of different art scenes and mend gaps that exist.
This exhibition is one specific instance of that. One thing writers have either failed to address or have chosen not to address is how the exhibition is marked by a larger ethnic diversity than what is often seen in Western exhibition practice.
This is a conscious choice on our part; one that could be taken for granted but shouldn’t. It’s the way it should more often be but that’s not always a reality when you look closer at things. Also, notably the works often are grand in scale which is a deliberate choice too, in order to afford the artists such opportunity that might not come often or so easily.
| Kasra Alikhani, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm | ||||
Kasra Alikhani Talk about your work: The work (picture 1) I'm exhibiting is an installation centered around the video work "Antingen jag eller antigen". It's an imitation of a hospital waiting room staged inside a dog kennel, a structure made of galvanized steel that can be seen as both shelter and a cage. This installation mirrors the set in the video which shows a talk show discussing the immune system. The talk show is recorded in a former waiting room in an 18th-century building in Göteborg, Gathenhielmska huset, and is inspired by Swedish daytime TV and alt-right news channels as well. With the work at large, I'm trying to mine my personal experience of auto-immune disease to ask wider questions about the language used to talk about autoimmunity and its cultural connotations. It's a language that's rather aggressive and reminds you of warfare but also of nationalism, which can be both comical and terrifying. How does that affect the view on the self and Other? Tell me a little about your artistic practice: In the last few years my practice has been dedicated to fiction as the main tool, experimenting with my idea of scenography and amateur film-making. I often look at commonplace situations and spaces and try to foreground some type of menace and absurdity haunting there, often in the form of ideas of sameness, Swedishness, and a sense of dissimulation. In recent years I've also taken interest in fantasies of illness/wellness in relation to these themes. I use many mediums to form these fictional worlds, such as music and painting which are both practices I have a long history with, but I don't see them as disparate, cause they work for the same goal kind of. The same goes for my sources or references which are often from mass culture and personal experience, but also from critical theory around my interests.  Birt Berglund, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Corina Wahlin.jpeg Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Corina Wahlin  4. Samaneh Reyhani (left) and Jonas Bentzer (right), FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matida Rahm  Ljubomir Popovic, , FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Corina Wahlin (C-print)  Ljubomir Popovic, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Corina Wahlin Ljubomir Popovic Talk about your work: The sculptural installation titled 'The Inbetweenship', that I'm presenting at the 'Future watch' group show at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern has a lot to do with our society's consumption of materialities within urban development and infrastructural space. The material I've used I see as archeological objects. They are these plastic sheets that are placed in between layers of soil and gravel, just above cables and pipes as a protective element. When an error occurs within construction, while the construction sites excavate the road, the material and its color signals as a warning, not to dig further. As a critical approach towards future city developments and urban infrastructure, I believe we who live within the urban peripheries and us artists who create our own sustainable features have our responsibilities. The material itself is overly consumed and hidden to uphold the capitalist frameworks of our future societies. The material I take out from Its original context is mainly to witness and expose. By creating rips and cut-out patterns within the material, the sheets become more flexible and the usage of the material evokes the idea of the material becoming more dynamic. The criticality lays not only in the overconsumption and the use of plastic material, It's also about how we build our future societies away from old fascist values, like Adolf Hitler's favorite architect Robert Speers theory of ruin value, where buildings and cities were built monumental and static to last a millennium after its original state. The cities everlasting growth proves that theory wrong. A city always grows and will always be dynamic. That's why it's important to zoom in on how we create our society's future outcomes. We sometimes forget the ambiguities of our own material use, especially with bigger projects of architectural construction. We forget to look at the materialities and could always question its consumption. The Installation and material I collect and expose is an act of civil disobedience on the dramatic change of city development and the gentrification process. The installation 'The Inbetweenship' are these yellow sculptural objects hanging from the ceiling almost as a forest to be within, the idea is to question the spatial dynamics by creating a more norm-creative and utopian approach, against a postcolonial and capitalist framework that upheld its power structures hidden within junction and infrastructural space. Tell me a little about your artistic practice: By observing cities' continuous and dynamic growth I navigate through changing urban peripheries. Maintaining mobility as a performative process allows me to zoom in, witness, and expose the later stages of gentrification and its power structures. It is a socially unfair process of pushing away local inhabitants in areas of segregation. I address junctions and in-between spaces. To trail for plastics and metals with vibrant colors that function as protective safety elements. Ripping out papers from ads, cutting in plastics to create stacks and collages, which mimic and trace the forms of repetitive structures of consumerism towards its collapse. By collecting materials as archeological objects, I displace them from their context as an act of civil disobedience against the gentrification processes. Creative destruction and its ruin value articulate a critical approach to the capitalist framework of gentrification.  Tobias Bradford, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Ashik Zaman  Tobias Bradford, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Corina Wahlin  Tobias Bradford, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm (Kulturhuset)  Helena Tan & Ljubomir Popovic, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm  Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021  Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021  Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021  Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021  Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021  Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021  Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021  Helena Tan, Future Watch, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021 Helena Tan Talk about your work: Old Bud: Die I, II, II (2021) : Drill Materials: Replica of unformatted blank pancake-die (Steel), wood, PLA, paint, acrylic Drool Materials: Replica of jingle bell pan- cake die (steel), wood, photograph, PLA, paint, acrylic Dribble Dimensions: 26 x 15 cm Materials: Replica of unformatted blank pancake-die (Steel), wood, PLA, paint, acrylic I was always drawn to bells as a child and am still recurrently interested in objects that are mobile, that which is migratory and autonomous. Bells function as a tool for location and movement, school bells and dinner bells gather people, call attention and keep a collective sense of time. When opening up the form of the jingle bell, the seed of the bell is released from inside, rendering its ability to localise static and suggesting that its audible nature is dissolved. The individual titles are taken from the default iPhone alarm bell names. This three steel dies (Drill, Drool, Dribble) are reproductions of pancake dies used to mass produce jingle bells. They in various ways explore routes and collective conditioning aswell as roots and tradition as an individual experience. Drool is a reference to the dog salivating image of a dogs tongue, as Pavlov’s dog salivates to its conditioned state. The flattened shape of the jingle bell is pressed out, mimicking the tongue licking the wall. Framed within the steel is a nostalgic image of a childrens game; a girl gluing helicopter seeds to her nose. Thinking of the four ways seeds disperse, 3D printed helicopter wing-nuts/bolts fly and propogate, multiplying their location, within the walls of the installation. The work ‘Poser’ is a cast iron replica of a public park bench coated in patina. The shape of a public park bench is proposed to blend in and mimic its surroundings, it impersonates and is meant to look like a parks’ surroundings, nature, to be both invisible and recognisable as public architecture. In ‘Poser’ a park bench is deconstructed and made back into what it is mimicking, a tree-like form, the very thing it was first imitating to become. Tell me little about your artistic practice: I am a Hong Kong-Chinese/Malaysian raised and British born artist working with sculpture, installation and writing. My work essentiatlly reflects on contemporary Western and Asian socio-diasporic culture and conditioning; how culture, emotion and fiction can shape notions of location and identity through assembling and mimicking industrial, personal and recognisable materials. Material examples include steel, glass, airport tax-free trolleys, wasp nests, monosodium-glutamate (MSG), monument love-locks and 3D digital processes. Aside from currently exhibiting at Kulturhuset, Stockholm in ‘Future Watch - TIO KONSTNÄRER I TIDEN’, I have recently shown in spaces across Vienna, Amsterdam at the Stedelijk Museum and Berlin. Last year I was a resident at ZK/U Berlin and am currently preparing for an exhibition curated by bologna.cc that will be open at Haus Wien in Vienna later this summer.  Lydia Ericsson Wärn, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm  Samaneh Reyhani, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm  Samaneh Reyhani, Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Ashik Zaman  Samaneh Roghani, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm (Kulturhuset)  Samaneh Roghani, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm  Samaneh Roghani, Helena Tan, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Corina Wahlin  Victoria Verseau, , FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm  Victoria Verseau, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm (Kulturhuset)  Victoria Verseau, FUTURE WATCH, curated by C-print, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, 2021, photo Matilda Rahm Victoria Verseau Talk about your work in in the show: My work ‘Foreign Body’ is a kind of homage to those of us trans persons who couldn’t bare to go on or who weren’t allowed to go on. It is a large installation with several sculptural works included in it. It is a work relating to the transitional (changing) body. It’s about the physical but also the inner, which is invisible to the eye. It’s about my own transition from boy to woman and my only other friend sharing the trans experience that I lost a few years after our gender confirmation surgery. I want to render visible what has been made invisible through this work. The work is divided into three sections or layers. Infront(outside), inside and behind. As a visitor the first thing you see is a six meter long, three meter high latex (wall) (architecture). Through the latex surface you can see shadows of things and other visitors behind it. As you enter behind the wall you enter into a more intimate and partly hidden room where stories that has been made invisible or forgotten are transferred to the visitor through sculpture. Many of the works are placed on elevated parts of a scene. It is (kind of a) a comment to putting your own life on a “stage” communicating these private stories although doubtfully and ambivalently behind this latexwall. As you walk further into the work it opens up and more and more is revealed. (One could see it as) It is a physical movement deeper into (the) understanding. You enter behind the skin into the inner and normally invisible. Behind a large mirror at the end of the room is the last layer. It is darker and and even more secret room that some visitors even miss. Here thoughts, not realised and realised ideas and memories are pinned as a large moodboard. They all serve as keys and clues to the works on the other side of the mirror. All the sculptures somehow relate to the body. The transitioning body and also the disembodied. Latex is similar to the skin as it is photosensitive and is tanned in the daylight, it also ages as our skin and in a ten year period it has ceased to exist. There are works relating to the missing body, the disembodied. As the sculpture of a petrified jacket that is missing the body that once wore (it) (the jacket) and the ghost that is a symbol of the disembodied. Something returning from the past, a memory, defying both time, space and death. Then there are sculptures relating more directly and physically to the body. Such as the work ‘5,6,7,8,9 inches 12,14,16,18,20 centimeters’ consisting of sculptural casts of vaginal dilators that one have to use after a gender confirmation surgery to prevent the new vagina from healing up. You have to continue these both physically and mentally hard exercises throughout life. This is something that has really affected me and burnt me out. The reiteration of this act, I am starting to realize, has actually in a way traumatized me. This object or medical instrument was also something I never had heard of before my surgery even though some biological women also have to use it. Perhaps it’s an object one doesn’t speak about because it’s connected to shame and secrecy. Many visitors thinks these sculptures are dildos or sex toys which proofs this object (isn’t yet very known to people) (hasn’t yet gone into the public consiousness.) First I was also ashamed of showing this work and in the first exhibition I presented them I hid them in a dark corner on the floor. Now they take more and more space and every time I am doing the dilation exercise I am casting a new sculpture, I am not as afraid of showing them anymore, still they are in a partly concealed inner room. As I said the work is also a homage to trans people and especially to those who couldn’t continue (in) life. It is quietly (communicating) telling the story of my friend Meril who decided to end her life three years after her gender confirmation surgery. We met in Thailand in 2012 where we both were undergoing the surgery. We became really good friends and supported each other before an uncertain future. We spoke about our hopes and dreams and we both missed love we had never yet experienced. When Meril passed away my world fell apart and I started to question everything. As a way of dealing with what had happened I started writing on a film script about our story. Our story is also materialized in a series of exhibitions, ‘Foreign Body’ is one of them. Tell me a little about your artistic practice. My starting point is often situations from my own life and the lives of people near me that has affected me or shaped my identity in a way. I think my art is a way of dealing with (my) quite dramatic history, a way of dealing with past traumas. The journey of memory between the mind and the world of objects and places; how stories about life come to be;and what is left out and forgotten are recurring themes that I work with. Since I was little, when I first became aware of reality and the world I lived in, I have been interested in what lies beneath the surface of that reality, right next to everyday life. What I now understand that I discovered as a lonely six-year-old in the woods was probably exactly what we do not have words or language for, the atmospheric and photosensitive. This was such a strong experience that I think it became a trauma that has been with me ever since. There are oceans of psychological and unknown worlds that can sometimes be felt as a presence in everyday life. I believe, hope but also doubt that they exist. A commute and a dissolved boundary between death and life. I want to approach the silent and sometimes sharp, tangible and dazzling reality,as well as the presence of something beyond our world,through my artistic processes. I am in constant motion between something general that I think concerns us all, and my personal psyche, a need to process what has happened. Through art, I try to capture, preserve and reconstruct the transient memories from crucial times that shaped me. Based on my story, I attempt to understand something bigger about who we are, how we exist and who we want to be. An ongoing project that began in 2015 is based on my transition, both the physical and the invisible, from boy to woman, and my (only other trans) friend Meril who I lost along the way. I want to make our struggle on the periphery of society visible and evoke that which moves in the destructive oblivion; to highlight and develop what has been made invisible by society and time; to give form to memories that have been gone but come back like ghosts. In the words of Louise Glück, "I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice" (Wild Iris, 1992). I wish to reach and communicate through time with my lost friend; the dead who find a voice in my works; myself as a little boy, feeling the alienation and exclusion that I long condemned but have now begun to accept. I believe that memory, time, the physical and death are connected in a way that I do not fully grasp but try to understand through art. I have a theory that the invisible—such as emotions, memories, time and events—is transferred to objects in physical reality, in the same way that it settles in our physical bodies as post trauma. These objects I save and hoard, and some I turn into sculptures by applying different materials. This is what I did with the H&M jacket I wore nine years ago when, shortly after my gender confirmation and filled with hope for the future, I was severely dumped and afterwards never experienced the same burning youthful love again. The dress I was wearing when I was involved in an assault has undergone a similar process. The objects or bodies undergo transitions to sculptures. The sculptures become symbols, lasting monuments to what has happened. They are dreams that never came true, ideas about the world and a life that has been broken; but also dreams that came true—that I got to be a woman—and that later turned out to be illusions. The works, the moving images and the sculptures are like testimonies that by their presence prove that what actually happened, happened. The boundary between the personal and the private is unclear in the work, and my ambivalence about publishing personal stories is often visible. I hide works behind large-scale membranes, walls and screens that you need to pass behind to enter the intimate space where the stories are presented.
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Future Watch website
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