The Monument of Modern Slavery
I am contributing to the exhibition disturbance: witch, curated by Alba D’Urbano and Olga Vostretsova at the Center of Contemporary Art (ZAK) / the Citadel Spandau – see a short description attached. The opening reception is scheduled for the 10th of September and I would be happy to welcome you there.
For this exhibition, I am preparing a work entitled „Monument for Modern Slavery“, which is going be an installation that reflects upon phenomena of slavery, which I am developing in dialogue with the international cultural community and the Fashion Revolution movement. Having spent time in Indonesia and witnessed the horrific living conditions of garment workers there and listened to the stories of their exploitation, I had the impulse to create this installation, which displays clothes collected from the art community and hopefully from other communities, on a series of burnt wooden stakes.
I cordially invite you to contribute to this project with the clothes from your own garderobe – those that you might be bored of, or about to throw in the garbage – from one of the big exploitative brands such as H&M, C&A, Adidas, Reebok, Esprit, Marks & Spencer, Patagonia, Timberland, VANS, The North Face, Wrangler, Puma, ASOS, Converse, Jordan, Nike, Primark, COS, Zara, Promod, GAP, TopShop, etc. These clothes will be modified according to my artistic method and placed on burnt wooden pillars reminiscent of medieval stakes for burning “witches”, expressing a common feeling of guilt in face of the oppressed workers You can send or bring the items of clothing directly to the below address, the Citadel in Spandau.
If you want your name or the name of your organization to be mentioned please let me know. You are welcome also to write a bit your thoughts about the subject along the sending the clothes.
Thank you so very much!
Gluklya
Links:
The exhibition disturbance: witch
disturbance: witch
Exhibition curated by Alba D’Urbano and Olga Vostretsova
ZAK – Center of Contemporary Art
Spandau Citadel Berlin
Opening reception: Sept 10, 2020, 7 pm
Duration: Sept 11 – Dec 20, 2020
The feminist movement of the 1970s had already made the connection between witches and emancipated women, and the witch became a feminist archetype. Often quoted are the slogans by the Italian feminists, “Tremate, tremate, le streghe sono tornate!” (Tremble, tremble, the Witches have returned!) or “La gioia, la gioia, la si inventa, donna si nasce, le streghe si diventa!” (The joy, the joy, she will be discovered: was born as a woman, became a witch). Sylvia Federici, in her analysis of witch-hunting in connection with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, also describes the solidarity of feminists with witches: “Across ideological differences, the feminists have realized that a hierarchical ranking of human faculties and the identification of women with a degraded conception of corporeal reality has been instrumental, historically, to the consolidation of patriarchal power andthe male exploration of female labor.” (Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation).
The exhibition disturbance: witch, located at the ZAK (Center for Contemporary Art) of the Spandau Citadel in Berlin, puts into focus disturbing factors that shake deadlocked power relations that are inherent in the character of the witch. The witch, the “abnormal,” the “irrational,” the “magical” and the “inverse” resists rigid role models and structures.
Unfolded within the framework of this international contemporary art exhibition are the aspects of the witch’s character. disturbance: witch does not address the practices of the historical witch nor the practice of magic, rather it analyzes the accompanying attributions to women and queer persons that are used as instruments of exclusion and strategies of a new witch hunt.
Artist list: Jamika Ajalon (US/FR), Emilio Bianchic (AR), Anna und Bernhard Blume (DE), Johanna Braun (AT), Barbara Breitenfellner (AT/DE), Lysann Buschbeck (DE), Alba D’Urbano und Tina Bara (DE), Sarah Decrostoforo (AT), Veronika Eberhardt (AT), Margret Eicher (DE), Parastou Forouhar (IR/DE), Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya) (RU/NL), Valerio Fuguccio (IT/DE), Nilbar Güres (TR), Horst Haack (DE), Emily Hunt (AU/DE), Orsi Horváth (HU), Isabel Kerkermeier (DE), Sharon Kivland (GB), Franziska Meinert (DE), Lisl Ponger (AT), Lambert Mousseka (CD/DE), Johannes Paul Raether (DE), Suzanne Treister (GB).