Gerrit Rietveld Academie Jewellery-Linking Bodies

Body Extensions: On Corporeal Topographies

The work of Barbara Graf is tightly involved with the body. The intense relationship to the body is explored through Anatomical Garments, body objects and enveloping bandages. In Anatomical Garments, anatomical structures are sewn into fabrics, these surround the body, and the physical space is turned upside down, expanded or rearranged. While many of the works ‘dress‘ the body, they are rather to be understood as body extensions: Shells that completely wrap the body, transform the artist into a sculptural figure and as a second skin determine the body’s position. These sculptural constructions can be disassembled into its individual parts, and come with a manual that resembles technical instructions. All of the elements together while operating as textile body-shells, are at the same time a conceptual art work, as well as a made-to-measure bag which transforms the sculpture into a travel kit.

Barbara Graf is an artist and lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the Textile Department. In her work she investigates body representations and develops flexible sculptures as a second skin. Her main media include drawing, sculpture, photography and film. Since 2004 she has been working in artistic research projects dealing with medical issues. She is currently developing her artistic doctoral thesis Stitches and Sutures on the visualisation of body perception at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
http://www.barbara-graf.at/

Please join us over zoom Apr 26, 2021 05:30 PM Amsterdam https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5358384261?pwd=cE5hcFJWTjVSd1Frc0xRY0UwbmgzZz09

Meeting ID: 535 838 4261 Passcode: 568094

Often times I’ve been asked to work in some really particular places. In sites, situations and contexts in which the agency of art struggles against a prevalent and dominant other. Perhaps that other is an aesthetic, other times an agenda, or maybe a history. In this presentation I will use the notion of gesture to talk though the works I made in some of these contexts. 

Scottish/Danish artist Edward Clydesdale Thomson is based in Rotterdam. His practice addresses contemporary conflicts of time by rethinking and reshaping the space and conditions of his artistic production along durational lines. His work is often concerned with the places and objects on the margins – physically, socially or symbolically – of outside and inside, of wild and tamed landscapes, of decoration or function. Be that a patterned fabric, a window blind, a gate, a washing line, a garden, or a sense of identity. He has exhibited at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, and the Malmo Konstmuseum. Notable solo projects include Grazer Kunstverein is moving; Grazer Kunstverein, Austria; wild care, tame neglect, Frankendael Foundation; Nothin Shakin but the Leaves on the Trees, Marabouparken konsthall, Sweden; and causa finalis at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam. He is joint head of Fine Art at BEAR, ArtEZ, Arnhem. 

The lecture is part of a field project for the fist year of the department, lead by Sonja Bäumel, and will be streamed from the StrandLab Almere. Friday, April 16 , 15:00 -16:30 join via this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87938891247

Sonia kazovsky’s work speculates possibilities for other worlds and social configurations. The propositions that Sonia brings forward are based on rigorous research into the theories and cultures that constituted the location from which she speaks. In the lecture Sonia will talk about the trajectory that brought her to articulate her artistic practice. The lecture will take the form of storytelling: weaving together anecdotes from personal biography, fiction, politics and artworks altogether presenting a reflection on Art and being an artist in the financial and political contemporary.

Sonia Kazovsky (RU/IL 1989) is an artist and researcher based in Amsterdam. Often collaborative, she adopts an intersectional approach that combines values from critical pedagogy and feminist institutional critique.  Sonia writes plays, in which the theater figures as medium and mode of presentation. This allows for the practice and presentation of prefigurative politics. Prefigurative politics refers to modes of societal and organisational structures, that aim to reflect a wishful future. That places emphasis on both the back-end of production, as well as the moment of presentation. Kazovsky’s work has been exhibited in institutional and self organized frameworks -among which the Van Abbemuseum, in Eindhoven(NL); State of Concept in Athens (GR); Perdu Poetry foundation in Amsterdam (NL); Oostpol Theater in Arnhem (NL); Kunstraum Düsseldorf (DE). In 2016 she was part of the YCW of the Berlin Biennale 9 (DE) and in 2019 she was nominated for the Artist revelation prize by MAD, Paris. Most recently she was awarded the Young Talent stipend from the Mondriaan Fund for the year 2020-2021. Her work is part of the national library of the Netherlands.

If you are interested in joining in person, Monday 12.4 18:00h please register at: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/LectureOnarchivalpracticesandcriticalFabulations@grac.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/