SAMMLUNG PHILARA
ATTEMPTS TO BE MANY
30 October 2021 to 23. January 2022
6 November 2021
ATTEMPTS TO BE MANY is a collage of emerging artists presented at the Sammlung Philara in Düsseldorf. The exhibition navigates questions around class, race, gender, sexuality and identity as well as community. The group exhibition brings together positions of younger female artists from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf whose explorations are formed along the plurality of identities - using collage techniques, they correct historical assumptions and also enable the reformulation of body narratives and learned narratives. In the process, additions, reformulations, recontextualisations to images, symbols and descriptions of a dominant society emerge.
The collage feeds on visual material, on contemporary society. Fragments taken from this circulation result in hybrid interpretative contexts detached from an assigned meaning through juxtapositions and overlaps. As in music through sampling and mash-up, collage techniques incorporate pre-existing elements from different sources and mark an approach that unifies associative contexts of meaning and enables new readings. Especially in our conflict-ridden times of social change, the collage has something emancipatory about it. It skilfully formulates concepts of identity, as opposed to rigid constructs of foreign attribution and ideological one-dimensionality.
Sammlung Philara - ATTEMPTS TO BE MANY
30 October 2021 to 23. January 2022
Birkenstraße 47
40233 Düsseldorf
www.philara.de
THERESA WEBER
Installationsansicht, © the artist and Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf
Photo: Kai Werner Schmidt
THE ARTISTS
Nara Bak
(*1993 lives and works in Düsseldorf) 2021 Graduated from the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Trisha Donnelly 2020 Studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Analia Saban, Stefan Kürten, Elizabeth Peyton, Eva Grubinger, Katharina Grosse, Ellen Gallagher.
The starting point of Nara Bak's artistic work is her own introspective recordings. Sensations from her subjective spaces of experience, which stem from a liminal phase, are narrated through material elements and symbolic representatives. The result is a narrative collage of monologue and speech, between collective and individual, to which both materials and rituals of everyday life are added.
Jana Buch
(*1988, lives and works in Düsseldorf) 2021 Moltkerei Werkstatt, Cologne 2021 Winner of the Förderpreis für Literatur Düsseldorf 2020 Notizen aus Stein / Baustelle Schaustelle, Essen / Düsseldorf 2019 Studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Christopher Williams, John Morgan and Keren Cytter In her work, Jana Buch mainly deals with language and photography. Her short prose texts interweave everyday impressions with social criticism and question current as well as historical circumstances. She is currently working on several interdisciplinary collaborative projects.
Donja Nasseri
(*1990, lives and works in Düsseldorf) 2021/22 Graduated from the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Gregor Schneider 2021 I am yesterday. I know tomorrow. | Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf 2015- 2019 Studied at Kunstakademie Münster with Mariana Castillo Deball In her works of photography, objects, video and language, Donja Nasseri interrogates past and present narratives of historical and personal histories and reflects in her collages on tradition, constructions of memories as well as potentials for change.
Arisa Purkpong
(*1995 lives and works in Düsseldorf) 2020 Notes from Stone | Baustelle Schaustelle, Essen / Düsseldorf 2019 From Me | KIT - Art in the Tunnel, Düsseldorf 2019 Faculty of Painting Sculpture and Graphic Art at Silpakorn University since 2016 Studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Christopher Williams and Trisha Donnelly Starting from photography, Arisa Purkpong works with cross-media elements, such as video and installation, which she continuously expands. Through her engagement with feminist films, which impact on the form and content of her work, she renews and creates memory images that describe behavioural codes, gender role attributions as well as narratives that operate unconsciously. She was awarded the Baker Tilly Artist Fellowship in 2019 and the Deutschlandstipendium in 2020.
Anys Reimann
(*1965, lives and works in Düsseldorf) 2018 - 2020 Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Ellen Gallagher 2019 Graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Thomas Grünfeld, 2011 - 2019 Studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Thomas Grünfeld, In her pictorial and sculptural works, collaged body images of Black emancipation, intimacy and gender emerge, which not least also tell of intersectional experiences. In her collages and collage paintings, a hybrid and fluid understanding of identity becomes visible that regards overlaps of forms and contents as fundamental.
Theresa Weber
(*1996, lives and works in Düsseldorf and London) 2021 Graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Ellen Gallagher 2021 Woven Memories | Dortmunder Kunstverein The artist uses materials such as silicone, synthetic hair, artificial nails, beads, textiles and jewellery, which mark body extensions in Theresa Weber's works and assume identity-forming functions, to decode social hierarchies and (re)find hybrid reformulations of cultural identity.
SAMMLUNG PHILARA
The Philara Collection is a public exhibition house for contemporary art.In addition to the changing presentation of works from Gil Bronner's collection, a number of temporary exhibitions are held annually. The exhibition venue in a former glass factory was converted by Sieber Architekten and awarded a prize for maintaining its industrial charm. On the roof of the former industrial wasteland is a 500sqm sculpture garden.
Philara's unique selling point is its focus on and support for local up-and-coming artists as well as established, internationally active artists, and its interdisciplinary orientation. In cooperation with various institutions, events such as theatre performances, concerts, talks and symposia are realised.
Attached to the Philara Collection is the Glas Lennarz, which is run by the Bulle Bakery as a bistro during the day and by Wyno as a wine bar in the evening.
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