HARDCOEUR

23.04 – 30.04.2021

Group exhbition with Ayla Pierrot Arendt, Agnese Galiotto, Alina Kopytsa, Kristina Lovaas

Curated by Teodora Talhoș

The starting point of this exhibition, which should have originally opened five months ago, was the inner turmoil caused by the social unrest that reached a high point recently. Broadly speaking, civil disobedience is produced by an unfortunate entanglement of unfavorable political and social conditions and a deeply rooted systemic discrimination. It usually unfolds as a chaos of smoke and anger, with victims on all sides. During the past few months, the initial idea of the show expanded and transformed, being heavily influenced by the current pandemic situation that made this world an increasingly precarious place. Not only has it left a mark on our personal lives, making us suspicious and anxious in our everyday interactions, but it also left the vulnerable population even more exposed to physical and economical adversities. It is in this overloaded context that the notion of vulnerability should be reassessed.

HARDCOEUR reflects on vulnerability as a versatile form of resistance that can show dissatisfaction with the existing hegemonic structures in a way that doesn’t employ violence and is sustainable. At the same time, it aims at investigating its potential as a catalyst for collective resilience, starting with the individual. Being vulnerable means being exposed, but also having agency, thus acting and being acted on at the same time. Acknowledging and embracing one’s own vulnerability implies taking a subversive stance against an established world view that primarily understands power as a display of brutality.

The four artistic positions presented in the exhibition propose different approaches towards vulnerability, implying it through a critique and a questioning of the dominating social and institutional constraints. The artworks reflect on the topic of radical exposure not only on a conceptual level, bult also on a material one. Embroidery, ceramics, performance and video are all media which are not (yet) fully embedded in the art historical canon or have only recently gained acknowledgement. Some of them have historically been associated with stereotypes of feminine means of expression and thus treated as peripheral to the main narrative of Western Art History. These materials are employed in creating an artistic context that enables a direct confrontation with the public space and invites the audience to an open dialogue.

Graphics: Ioana Fabiola Pascu
Photography: Jiyoon Chung