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“The Weighing of the Heart” at the group exhibition “Stress Rehearsal” at das weisse haus, Vienna

November 2, 2020
Art, climate change, Exhibitions, Vienna

The Weighing of the Heart” is currently on exhibition for the group exhibition “Stress Rehearsal” at das weisse haus in Vienna, one of my previous and favorite home cities! Thank you to The Peace Studio to which I first presented this work, curator-in-residence @malousolfjeld for her support, the UNSW Design Futures Lab , my accidental home for the past month, and my PhD supervisors!

The Weighing of the Heart

2020

Australian bushfire remains, resin

Human heart sculptures are cast out of ashes and other organic remains from the Australian bushfires. I reference the scene of the “Weighing of the Heart”, a spell in the Egyptian Book of the Dead in which the heart of Imhotep is weighed against a feather. If the heart fails to balance it will be eaten by the beast, Ammut, and Imhotep will be condemned. If the scales remain balanced, Imhotep enters the afterlife with the other blessed dead. In casting the ashes with resin, I arrest metabolism of the remains back into the soil, creating objects of memory in a political landscape that forgets the bushfire crisis periodically, only to remember them when the next bushfire crisis commences with greater intensity.

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From the curatorial statement:

with Mohamed Allam, Will Benedict, Daniel Mølholt Bülow, Gillian Brett, Rah Eleh, Rachel Fäth, Line Finderup Jensen mit Adnan Popovič, Juri Schaden & Parastu Gharabaghi, Lola Gonzàlez, Hanna Husberg & Laura McLean, Mohammed Laouli, Yein Lee, Elisabeth Molin, Jean Painlevé, Oliver Ressler, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Catherine Sarah Young
curated by Malou Solfjeld (Curator in Residence 2020)

Exhibition duration: October 29 – December 12, 2020
Exhibition start: October 28, 2020, 4-9pm


Expressions of solidarity on balconies, grounded planes on international airfields, tales of a reviving non-human natural world – for many, the COVID-19 pandemic nurtures hopes for more communal, equal and caring futures. At the same time, however, the global health crisis gives reasons for more dystopian prospects of co-existence on this planet. Among other things, it further mobilises xenophobic sentiments and multiplies social inequalities. More so, it has thwarted the momentum of climate activism in the media to the extent that scholars like the French philosopher Bruno Latour have declared the pandemic a “dress rehearsal” for the exacerbating climate catastrophe ahead of us. 

Deliberately emphasising and yet not isolating ecological queries and concerns, the group exhibition “Stress Rehearsal” zooms into the abyss; into the bushfire in Australia, oil tanks sinking into the ocean, into the sea level rise on the Maldives and open landfills in Morocco. It brings together works by an international cohort of artists to critically reflect on the entanglements of the global pandemic, climate crisis, mass extinction, social inequality and turbo-capitalism. Gathering a hybridity of perspectives from the past, present and future, “Stress Rehearsal” collapses the linearity of time in order to activate our senses in the here and now. What is our individual as well as our collective responsibility towards more livable futures? What kind of new forms of agency do we need to craft in order to co-shape worlds-in-common – on- and offline, with the living and the non-living? 

The exhibition unpacks questions like these in three different sections; We created this beast (referring to Bram Ieven and Jan Overwijk’s eponymous text), The pandemic as a dress rehearsal (in line with Bruno Latour’s essay Is this a dress rehearsal?) and The pandemic is a portal (alluring to Arundhati Roy’s eponymous article). The latter division is conceived as a laboratory of sorts, an accumulating digital archive of links and texts, videos and images. It serves as a multi-vocal platform where artists, curators, scholars, activists and visitors alike are invited to contribute and negotiate visions and perspectives on how to live together otherwise. The show consciously hosts a majority of video works as a means to reflect on contemporary modes of perception and consumption. It has been developed by the curator Malou Solfjeld with the support of Alexandra Grausam, Aline Lenzhofer and Frederike Sperling from das weisse haus team.

Find the link to the exhibition here.

Article on Springerin on Contemporary Art and Social Inclusion

October 25, 2018
Publications

I’m honored to contribute an article to the October issue of Vienna-based springerin – Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, a quarterly magazine dedicated to the theory and critique of contemporary art and culture. Entitled “A Different Shape of Progress” (Fortschritt in anderer Form), I write about contemporary art and social inclusion through the context of my interdisciplinary art practice.

Order the issue here: http://www.springerin.at/en/2018/4/

The article is in German but send me a message if you want the original English article.

From the editor:

Issue 4/2018

#Progress

Is our society developing further? “Further” in the sense that efforts are made, in real practical terms, to remediate circumstances recognised as unjust and to actively set in motion processes that aim to promote balanced modes of living together? Is progress, which has so long determined the narrative of modernisation and social redistribution, still a significant category today? Are aspects of progress or more viable approaches to overcoming unjust, non-egalitarian relations perhaps to be found in the cultural realm rather than elsewhere? And should we give credence to ideologies of progress that locate such progress above all in the technological realm, possibly harbouring as a hidden agenda a conviction that societal mechanisms will somehow or other come into play in the wake of developments on the technological front? Contemporary art may perhaps always be one step ahead of all this, in that it seeks to impact on an irksome Here and Now from the perspective of the future, of a vision drawn with idealised or utopian brushstrokes. The fall issue unfurls scenarios that engage with this impact, asking to what extent it offers a viable means of working toward (also social) progress that genuinely merits this designation.

Visual Art Residency in Vienna by the Austrian Federal Chancellery and KulturKontakt Austria

April 7, 2018
Vienna

I’m thrilled to be selected from a pool of 985 artists to do a three-month residency in Vienna commencing in April by the Bundeskanzleramt Österreich / Austrian Federal Chancellery and KulturKontakt Austria.

I’m very honored to have met Her Excellency Ambassador Bita Rasoulian who wished me well before I left Manila.

With Her Excellency Ambassador of Austria to the Philippines Bita Rasoulian

 

I’m looking forward to hitting the ground running in Vienna, my 8th residency city, and continuing my work on art and science, picking up from where I left off in the Amazon. Our artist profiles are on the KulturKontakt Austria website.

The residency runs from April 6 to June 30. Today was my first day after a long flight. Schloss Laudon, where the residency is, is quite lovely and gives me a great daily walking ritual on the castle grounds.

Schloss Laudon

Alexander von Humboldt and Caroline Herschel!

 

Lavender and Rosemary

We artists are in a nearby building; they use this castle for seminars and stuff. It’s nice to look at, though after decluttering a house I’ve no desire to live in excess. There are two swans I’ve named Alexander von Humboldt and Caroline Herschel and two frogs I’ve christened Lavender and Rosemary that I say hello to.

I almost never travel as a tourist—all that carbon to take the same photos as everyone—that I realize that packing 30 kilos is always a challenge because I bring my life to another country in order to produce things instead of to shop. In trying to keep with my healthy and zero waste (more like Zero Waste as Much as Possible) lifestyle, I bring my arsenal of spices and superfoods to keep me healthy despite being in another country. Since an airline lost my bags two years ago, luggage anxiety is a real thing for me. Thankfully, everything made it, even the hot sauce.

The hot sauce made it!

So much to learn, make, and do! Very grateful for all the fantastic support and excited for all that is to come!

This residency is made possible as part of the Artists in Residence programme of the Federal Chancellery and KulturKontakt Austria.