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Emilio Chapela, Tirdad Hashemi and Soufia Erfanian, Andrea Ziegler,
Marco Montiel-Soto, Anna M.Szaflarski and Constanza Mendoza
EPHEMERAL UTOPIA — LAGE EGAL #195
LAGE EGAL [COPYRIGHTberlin]
Schwedenstraße 16 13357 Berlin
Contact +33 6 20 02 55 62
berlinexhibition2023@gmail.com
Opening on Friday, June 9, 2023, 7pm — 10pm
with curator tour (in English), 8pm
Open hours: SAT — SUN, 2pm — 8pm
Artist Panel, Saturday 5pm
EPHEMERAL UTOPIA offers a temporary space that promotes inclusivity and celebrates diversity. This group exhibition with international artists based in Berlin plays with the ambiguity of identity in contemporary society by showing how identity can’t be separated from the social, political, gender or historical problems that people face in everyday life.
The context of Berlin, a globalized city where artists come with their own cultures and beliefs appeared as an ideal backdrop for this project. This exhibition highlights a selection of works using different media; painting, textile, video and sculpture, ceramic and installation.
An artist’s journey is often shaped by what they have encountered in their past experiences and social environment. In the same way, the influence of political and social concerns on art have been shown by sociologists through the last decades. Nevertheless, art cannot only be determined by its context of creation, as formalists have sought to prove the independence of the artist’s mind and its formal expression.
Regardless of culture and environment, people embody individuality and have the avenue to express original thoughts, especially through art and literature. All the artists presented in this exhibition deal with multiculturalism or the personal blend of one’s cultural codes, social labels and lived experiences. It is more complex than just living in many places; rather, it is about a reconciliation of one’s cultures to forge a new, proud, and unique identity.
EPHEMERAL UTOPIA is curated by a group of students in the MBA Contemporary Arts: Sales, Display, and Collecting program at the IESA Arts and Culture School in Paris, all coming from different countries and backgrounds: Lilli Donohue, Rhea Eunjoo Inn, Htet Myo Htut Aung, Sylvie Jacob, Tian Liang, Eléonore Scarvelis, Mahsan Shams, Nishat Sultan Khan and Han Yang.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Emilio Chapela (b. Mexico City, Mexico, 1978) is a visual artist living in Berlin with a PhD in Artistic Research from the University of Plymouth. He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, México. His art practice explores intricate connections between science, technology, and ecology. He inquiries on notions of time and space that are manifested through matter and forces such as astronomical phenomena, light, weather, gravity, rocks, plants, volcanoes, and rivers. He enjoys writing, walking, hiking, and stargazing, which are tools that he utilizes for his art practice. He works in different media such as moving images, sculpture, painting and installation. His work has been shown widely in museum and gallery exhibitions in Mexico and abroad.
Tirdad Hashemi (b. Tehran, Iran, 1991) lives and works between Paris, Tehran and Berlin. Whether on paper or canvas, often in small formats and depending on the means at hand, people agitate, congregate and break out. Hashemi will never feel free from her home country, Iran, but somehow, she will remain a foreigner, a stranger wherever she goes. Art is her only necessity, her true home. The only place she can express fully. Faced with the ups and downs of history, even safe spaces risk being transforming in prisons. Hashemi weaves solitude and intimacy , survival and fragility .
Soufia Erfanian (b. Mashhad, Iran 1990) is a Berlin based visual artist. Her artistic practice as well as her conviction in life is to relentlessly strive towards human connection. For as long as she recalls, art has served as a survival tool. It has allowed her to dream and to exist beyond the boundaries of time, place, social pressure and reality in all its complexity. Her artistic practice as well as her conviction in life is to relentlessly strive towards human connection. She has discovered the best way she can fully sympathize and communicate her sentiments with people, is to paint their stories, suffering, joy, what matters to them and what keeps them up at night. In 2021 she was one of the artists part of the residency program, together with Tirdad Hashemi.
Andrea Ziegler (b. Germany, 1983) is a textile artist living in Hamburg. With thread and a sewing machine she creates contrasting and whimsical works of art on fabric . In her artistic work, Andrea Ziegler devotes herself to a virulent topic of our time: the concept of home. What does home mean today? Who is part, who is not? What creates a sense of home? In order to approach these questions, she goes to unknown places in the periphery, observes and interviews the people living there, and enters into conversation with them. For a certain period of time sh0e becomes part of the respective community. She then transfers her personal impressions and observations into artistic works. She “draws” embroidery images with the machine on different fabrics, sometimes colored, sometimes transparent.
Marco Montiel-Soto (b. Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1976) is a traveler and immigrant, constantly finds himself returning forward. During these expeditions, the route becomes imaginary and travel time elastic. His work and installations are a creolization of architectural structures, collected found objects, sounds compositions, videos, photographs, drawings, collages, texts and maps. His work explores the intersections between political and poetic territories, homeland, traditions, economy, archaeology, religion, myths, death, cosmos and chaos.
Anna M.Szaflarski (b. St. Catharines, Canada, 1984) is a writer, artist and artist-book publisher living in Berlin. In her works, she explores the intersections of art , culture and politics , particularly in relation to issues of identity , migration and borders . She often addresses the ways in which borders and boundaries shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us and how we can navigate and challenge these boundaries to create more inclusive societies . Solo exhibitions include Between Swimming and Dryland presented by Kunstverein Reutlingen
Constanza Mendoza (b. Chuquicamata , Chile 1971) is a multidisciplinary artist living in Berlin . Mendoza’s initial disciplines of sculpture and photography are still essential tools within her process. Her recent works deal with economies of the desires (The Displacement), politics of perception (Dance of Paradoxes), multiplicity and animism (The Monkey Woman), exile and memory (Alma Project), as well architectures of necropolitics (Unterstadt). Mendoza has exhibited extensively in Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga, San Sebastián, Margareth Harvey Gallery, London, Kunst im Untergrund NGBK, Berlin (2008), Instituto Cervantes Berlin (2012), Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2009)
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