GIBCA Extended Regional Exhibition 2021 is the result of an open call to artists based in the region of West Sweden and is curated by Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu.
´´The exhibition, as reflected in its title, makes a comment on the machine that is present day. Like in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the decline of the body through interaction with the machine is inevitable. The artists show markings, sutures, reactions, and manifestations of these interactions. Surrounding them, Gothenburg presents itself as a contraption made of roads, bypasses, infinite passages, noisy cranes, segregation, forming the maze of contemporary society. Its roads and blockages go nowhere – there is, in a sense, nowhere to arrive. Its paths, like arms, cross through incessant scaffolding into the barren unknown of colonial history. What then? Does it demand comfort, or do you feel comforted by it as it stands and looks at you, washing away the secrets of its trading history, anachronistic yet completely powerful and veiled in indifference? To note, whilst walking through the exhibition remember that the machine should not be befriended as it might bite. ´´
– Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu.
Photo at the venue: Hendrik Zeitler
Artists
Charlotta Hammar
Dominika Kemilä
Kasra Seyed Alikhani
Klara Andersson
MC Coble
Mercè Torres Ràfols
Nina Mangalanayagam
Nontokozo Tshabalala
Shogo Hirata
Trinidad Carrillo
Title: ZURE
Paper textile weaving (paper, acrylic paint, potato starch)
Dimensions: 185 x 122 cm
Shogo Hirata affirms living between worlds. A skilled textile master who studied both traditional Japanese textile methods and ones local to Sweden, he uses his artistry to weave a vocabulary and a way of translating something from one culture to another. The search for familiarity is a classic exercise when finding belonging in a new context. By weaving paper threads, the process of making textiles is equated to that of writing, of creating signs of communication and leaving written traces of one’s own history. Paper is a medium of narrativity and of safeguarding. What the artist finds impossible to express in words finds its way into the weave – a gesture of defiance and of resilience. (Tawanda Appiah and Simona Dumitriu)
“The title Zure comes from the Japanese word for gap. Having been born and raised in Japan and later moving to Gothenburg, I noticed a difference in the perspective from which I view the city, its people, and its culture. I describe it as living in the gap between two cultures. What I see is different from what others see. The years I spent here haven’t closed this gap. Sometimes I lose track of where I belong.” (Shogo Hirata)
Structured around the theme of the city as a machinery of the present time, Comforting the machine synthesised and gave its audience a tight and poignant grasp of truths in the raw. In preparation for the exhibition, the ten artists were also invited to submit something the curators called “Provocations”. The provocation to each artist was a task to expand themselves beyond the walls of the gallery by mapping traces of their work in the region, in history and the future, and to collate them as a string of continuations.
My work becomes/is a reflection of the voice of the local community. The sound of the city/region reverberates through my body, stored in my head together with memories of the past from my home city, country. They all interact in diverse ways and appear throughout my hands. My textile/fiber art is a mixture of two cultures, past and present, where I am now and where I have been.
Since moving to Sweden I have struggled to really connect with the culture. Instead, I feel like I am looking upon the city with different eyes, bringing a different perspective into the local arts and crafts scene in the city/region.
In future years, I might still feel like an outsider. However, I think it is okay to be like no other Swedish or Japanese person and instead stand in-between. I see it as a strength in my art practice.
As I always find it easy to picturise my thoughts instead of verbalising them, this image is my answer to the provocation. (Shogo Hirata)
