As in Aia Sofia Coverley Turan’s works Untitled and Interrupted history which consist of a small figure on a pedestal, dragging a crumpled piece of paper (a document or letter), and a relief that is both a fragment of a home and a document patched together with tape. In these works, paper appears as groping memories that you try to piece together and retain in order to understand your history. History as in the individual’s own history or as in the Kurdish cultural history that has been forgotten and obliterated and must be written out of fragments. The sculptures are also romantic; standing on pedestals and are painted.
The romantic is also found in Anton Munar’s work En su claustro, which translates to In his closter. In a bedroom, in a bed; a body is resting while another body is about to wake up, morning light streaming through red curtains. The painting reminds me of the place you find yourself before stepping out into the world; the home, the bedroom, the kitchen, or in bed next to your love. Let me paint with a broad brush and say that a dark bedroom with a sleep-drunk mind and a warm body bubbling next to you is perhaps a universal wordless experience of intimacy, tenderness and quiet before the day begins.
The scenic and intimate can also be found in Gregor Fuchs’s graphic works that seem like small scenes from films; a calendar, a butter knife, a greeting, a bird with a name. In the work Alarm two bodies are printed on top of each other as a deliberate mistake or as an embrace, and in the work Being home it looks like a warm body, a piece of furniture or a pile of duvets that are thrown on top of each other. A kind of tender minimalist graphics about relationships and human things.
All the works in the exhibition have layers of poetry and writing in them either in the titles or concretely in the work. As in Ihsan Ihsan’s ceramic works, where text and images lie under the ceramic’s smooth glaze like a collage. Something in Ihsan’s ceramic works reminds me of the quality of a notebook; snippets of rap lyrics, a treasured family photo, Arabic scriptures, a letter to a friend. A title like Call me if you get lost bears the quality of a song title, a declaration of love or a quick text message. The edible, beautifully molded ceramics carry tales of grief, loss, homesickness, magic, poetry, money, art clichés and re-appropriation.
Then there is myself; Anna Stahn; I contribute to the exhibition with one graphic work Pinned, pale, products. An etching with Chine collé and sugar aquatint; a little nostalgic, like French dress up dolls and underwear, with a little consumerist critic and an apprehension woven into the title and into the tissue paper border of the cotton panties.
