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11/3/2015

Two Exhibitions

Trondheim Kunstmuseum TKM, Trondheim

Slavs and Tatars: Long Legged Linguistics

”…language politics, the march of empires and the resistance of phonemes”

The reading-group turned art collective Slavs and Tatars combines a linguistic approach with often ribaldrous, high- and low –culture references in works centred around culture politics and religion.

The cycle of work, titled Long Legged Linguistics, focusses on language as a source of political, metaphysical, and even sexual emancipation. In the history of cultural migration and exchange, the march of alphabets has often accompanied that of empires and religions: the Latin script along with the Roman Catholic faith; Arabic with Islam and Cyrillic with Orthodox Christianity, and subsequently the USSR.

The exhibition at Trondheim kunstmuseum presents sculptures, print works, and Love Letters –a series of carpets based on the drawings of Russian poet, playwright and artist Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930). Through caricature, the carpets depict the experience of having a foreign alphabet imposed on one’s native tongue and the linguistic acrobatics required to negotiate such change. In particular, the carpets tell two parallel stories: that of the Bolsheviks’ forced Latinization and later Cyrillicization of the Arabic-script languages spoken by the Muslim and Turkic-speaking peoples of the Russian Empire, and the 1928 language revolution of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—Turkey’s first president—in which the Turkish language was converted from Arabic to Latin script.

The casualties of these linguistic takeovers—lost letters and mistranslations—are given center stage here as a testament to the trauma of modernization. The exhibition Long Legged Linguistics at Trondheim kunstmuseum contemplates and celebrates the resistance of these maladapted sounds.

The art collective Slavs and Tatars, works in a number of different media, including installations, lecture performances, publications and sculptures. Their works address connections between politics, language, history and social and cultural practices in the region they define as ”the area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia.”

On April 9 there will be a lecture performance, The Tranny Tease by Slavs and Tatars as part of the exhibition.
Johan Börjesson, Director Trondheim kunstmuseum

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Mai Hofstad Gunnes: Proverbs for Ouroboros

Mai Hofstad Gunnes’ project Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins. (2012) consists of a 16 mm film, collages, a series of screen prints, and an artist’s book. The project contains references from psychoanalysis and the animal mythology and architecture of Hopi Indians, and presents a maze-like narrative in which architecture and the life cycle of snakes are brought together through magical assimilation. In a 1923 essay, German art historian Aby Warburg writes about the symbolism of snakes in the rituals of Hopi Indians. To them, the snakes’ slithering bodies resemble bolts of lightning. In Gunnes’ film this ritual is projected onto three characters, whose performances cause the apartment in which the film takes place to “hatch” and fall to ruin.

The pictures on the walls in the apartment may be a reference to Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. Warburg wanted to write art history with a difference; he brought images together in new ways in order to trigger the viewer’s associations and memory, and created an alternative, non-linear, art history. This method is similar to that of Hofstad Gunnes. In both projects exhibited in Proverbs for Ouroboros one can trace a similar interest in combining images and elements in new constellations.
In An Everywhere of Silver (2009) footage of a rocket launch is merged with footage staged by two dancers. The two women represent the two test vessels MIRIAM and REGINA, which were launched, in 2006 and 2008 respectively, on Earth in preparation for the Mars balloon project ARCHIMEDES, planned for 2017. Hofstad Gunnes visited the ESRANGE Space Center near Kiruna, Sweden, to observe the members of the Mars Society Germany, and captured all their activities on film, from their preparations to the MIRIAM launch.

Mai Hofstad Gunnes (b. 1977 in Lørenskog) studied at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Universität der Kunste, Berlin, and the CCA; Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan. She currently lives and works in Oslo. Hofstad Gunnes has held many solo exhibitions, including at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, UKS, Oslo, and Oslo Kunstforening. She has taken part in several group exhibitions, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Bergen Kunsthall and Temporary Gallery, Cologne. Her works have been acquired by the National Museum, Oslo, among others.

Petra Schlömer, Museum Education Advisor

Image: Invitation

Opening: March 12

Trondheim kunstmuseum
Bispegata 7 B
7013 Trondheim
Norway

Opening hours:
Monday and Tuesday: closed
Wednesday - Sunday: 12 am - 4 pm
Thursday: 12 am - 8 pm

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