City States / Liverpool Biennial 2012, September 15 – November 25, LJMU Copperas Hill Building, Copperas Hill, Liverpool, L3
September 14, 3–5 PM: Professional and press preview with opening speech by Tine Colstrup, Senior Advisor, The Danish Agency for Culture.
September 15, 2–3 PM: Talk by Alfredo Cramerotti, Mostyn.
Approaching Journey implies travel from one place to another and a dawning of awareness, reflection, transformation and openness. In some instances, these states of mind are welcomed and in others, they may be forced upon us by circumstance. It may be a journey from one’s homeland never to return, or it may be a rite of passage. Part of all journeys is the departure and an anticipation of arrival, the leaving behind and the prospect to ask retrospectively, what was the journey about?
Trust is inherent to travel and we listen in good faith to the directions of strangers to make our way. Approaching Journey explores the encounter with people, history and places as a mutual exchange — opening to unconditional hospitality.
The exhibition plan resembles a typical detached house with interconnected rooms. Our place of departure is a sense of home. Each space represents a small solo exhibition of four Copenhagen-based artists. Yvette Brackman exhibits Of Living and The Dead, which explores Journey within the familiar as a way to go deeper into our understanding of the past and reconnect with it in a personal way. Jane Jin Kaisen’s Revolution is not a bird’s eye view…but a rose is a rose is a rose… is a journey across representations of the recent Egyptian Revolution, reflecting a political reality and its complexities. Jens Haaning presents the photographic work Antonio, Faysal, Murat, Ecevit, Hakan, Shabeer, Deniz, Dennis, Auranzeab, Radovan, Sambas, Ömer as a journey towards cultural translation, questioning how we meet, see and place other cultures within our society. Ismar Čirkinagić makes a journey beneath the surface with Željava Air Base and Herbariums, going beyond what we see and removing the layers covering the absurdities and brutalities of war.
The journey is a mindset, and each of these artworks represents a process of journeying into complex aspects of life and living.
Journey within the familiar — Yvette Brackman
Yvette Brackman exhibits her most recent artwork Of Living and The Dead. The work is a mixed media installation consisting of two video screens, cushions on carpet and a vitrine with sculptural accessories. Of Living and The Dead is based on Brackman’s collaboration with her mother Rita Lipson, narrating memories from her childhood to be restaged in her current home. In seven scenes, she retells the journey of how she was forced to flee from Poland into Russia, to become a refugee and never see her father again. Each scene is re-enacted by Brackman using different sculptural accessories that each symbolise a main element in the stories told. Living and the Dead (performance) is a 1:20 minute loop video showing Brackman in a clean white space, choreographically re-performing the scenes with the props. The journey within the familiar is a way to go deeper into our understanding of the past and reconnect with it in a personal way.
Journey beneath the surface — Ismar Čirkinagić
Ismar Čirkinagić exhibits the photographic works Željava Air Base 1 and Željava Air Base 2 together with 11 pressed natural plants from the series Herbariums. Most wars are rooted in ownership of land — a substance that both nourishes the cycles of life and holds the history of destruction. Herbarium is a series of plants naturally growing on locations of the largest mass graves in Bosnia, not far from Čirkinagić’s hometown. The plants, collected by the artist from 2006 to 2012, are neatly pressed as botanical gardeners do for archival purposes. These natural elements are juxtaposed with photo works from the demolished Željava Air Base — one of the largest underground military airbases in Europe, situated on the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, built between 1948 and 1968 and demolished during the Balkan Wars. In his search for logic within the madness of the Balkan Wars, Čirkinagić goes beneath the ground and beyond what we see, removing the layers covering the absurdities and brutalities of war.
Journey towards cultural translation — Jens Haaning
Jens Haaning exhibits the photographic work Antonio, Faysal, Murat, Ecevit, Hakan, Shabeer, Deniz, Dennis, Auranzeab, Radovan, Sambas, Ömer (2000). This series portrays first-generation refugees living in Copenhagen in a style similar to fashion magazines, combined with a small text listing the depicted clothes and accessories. The lightness of flipping fashion magazines is broken — we are confronted with our own perception. Haaning forces us to go through a cultural translation by playing with the desirable object known from the fashion format, confronted with the undesirable situation of being a refugee. The 12 portraits become a mirror of the visual analysis that often takes place unspoken, questioning how we meet, see and place other cultures within our society.
Journey across representations — Jane Jin Kaisen
Jane Jin Kaisen’s video work Revolution is not a bird’s eye view…but a rose is a rose is a rose… concerns the representation of women, taking as its outset the conservative Egyptian Salafist Al Nour Party’s parliamentary election poster, which replaced the image of their female candidate with a rose. The video is composed entirely of short texts compiled from newspaper headlines, quotes, protest slogans, observations, poetry, diary entries and conversations, written and collected by the artist while residing in Cairo in the winter of 2011–2012. Alternating between statements, poetic language and reflections, the work creates a destabilised narrative that exposes the complexity, multiplicity and contradictions in the aftermath of the Egyptian Revolution.
The Artists
Ismar Čirkinagić (DK/BIH)
Born in 1973 in Prijedor, Ex-Yugoslavia. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark and Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Education: Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Exhibitions: HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Esbjerg Museum of Arts, Museum 25 Maj Beograd, Serbia; Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, The Aarhus Art Building, GL STRAND Copenhagen, Denmark; Kunstverein Schwimmhalle Schloss Plön, Germany; BM Suma, Turkey.
Jane Jin Kaisen (DK/US/KOR)
Born in 1980, Seoul, South Korea. Adopted to Denmark in 1980. Based in Copenhagen. Education: MFA Interdisciplinary Studio Art, UCLA; MA Art Theory and Communication, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. Exhibitions: Videonale 13, Incheon Women Artists Biennale, 6th Gwangju Biennale, Deformes Biennale Chile, Gana Art NY, Kunsthallen Brandts, Museum for Contemporary Art Roskilde, Aarhus Art Building, Kyoto Arts Center, Beijing 798 Art Zone.
Jens Haaning (DK)
Born in 1965 in Hørsholm, Denmark. Based in Copenhagen. Education: Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Exhibitions: Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne; Secession, Vienna; Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen; Goodwater Gallery, Toronto; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona. Group exhibitions include Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Apexart, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (MoMA), New York. Has participated in the 9th Istanbul Biennial, Documenta 11, Kassel, and the 2006 Gwangju Biennial.
Yvette Brackman (US/DK)
Born in New York City. Based in Copenhagen and New York. Education: Fine Arts, The Art Institute of Chicago; Fine Art and Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago. Exhibitions: Tromsø Kunstforening; LAXART, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde; Trøndelag Contemporary Art Center, Trondheim; Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; Galerie Mikael Andersen; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
Generously supported by the Danish Arts Council, the British Council in Denmark and The Danish Cultural Institute in Edinburgh.
Curated by Helene Lundbye Petersen and Tijana Mišković