NEWSLETTER #2 FROM ALL ALL ALL
This is the second newsletter from All all all, on the occasion of the 2nd residency exhibition and it's upcoming finissage: Sidsel Ana Welden Gajardo and an artistic alliance with Melodi Soltani: Mapping the displaced and Call Center for the displaced, November 4 – December 17, 2022.
Funding received for Mapping the displaced (before taxes):
25.333 kr.
(100.000 kr *Curator fee given by Gl. Strand for the year with the open call, along with paid housing expenses. Original fee is spent partly on paying the curators, partly saved for production).
Funding distributed in Mapping the displaced:
Resident artist fee, Sidsel Ana Welden Gajardo: 12.000 kr.
Collaborating artist fee, Melodi Soltani: 6.000 kr.
Designer fee, Alexis Mark: 9.000 kr.
Curator fee, Klara Li/Nanna Saplana: 3.000/900 kr.
All all all. Photo: Casper Cosmus.
Hello,
In mid-November All all all opened its second residency exhibition Mapping the displaced, in which the space was given to author and artist Sidsel Ana Welden Gajardo to develop what she thought of as a textile expansion of her coming novel. The project grew from the artist’s wish to translate her individual work as a writer into her growing practice as an artist, and took form after the Chilean craft tradition known as arpilleras – a sewing tradition that arose during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1970ies Chile, carried on by women to break censorship, sewing protest onto fabric.
On the linen scenes in bright colors depict the everyday life of the working class. Welden Gajardo started sewing and adding scenes from her novel to her fabric while the matching texts were hung on the wall. When we opened only a few pictures occupied the 50 meter long runner but as we enter the last week of the residency many applications have been attached, new ones are in process and threads stitched by collaborators appear on every stretch.
From the opening of Mapping the displaced. Photo: Amanda Bødker.
Original arperilla application by the artist’s aunt. Photo: All all all.
Arpillera Room. Photo: All all all.
Dio No esta Aqui. Photo: All all all.
Mapping the displaced. Photo: Sidsel Ana Welden Gajardo.
Translation, slowness, and process
With its foundation in translation – from one language to another, and from one medium to another – and being defined by the innate slowness that hand sewn work requires, Mapping the displaced has created an opportunity for All all all’s exhibition format to very literally be dictated by process.
Although we’d tried to communicate the lengthy growth of this particular format as transparently as possible it turned out to still be a complex task to invite audiences into. Due to the project’s quiet nature where a small insertion or tiny new application hidden in a fold was maybe all the news of one day, the exhibition turned out to test some guests’ patience, while others enjoyed the slowness and returned to the space again and again. Whether this mostly is a testimony of the project working or of too much recluse are questions we bring with us into the new year.
Call Center for the displaced. Photo: All all all.
From the opening of Mapping the displacded. Photo: Amanda Bødker.
Collectivity and community
At the same time, it has been rewarding for us and for Welden Gajardo, who has spent time in the space often, returning weekly to work on the runner, to rest, and to talk. She has done this by herself but also along with fellow artists and friends who share diasporic family histories and the experience of being both homesick and sick of one’s home(s). Each week during open and closed hours friends have sat sewing on the floor and the actions of their work are as much imprinted on the arpillera as the applications themselves – all of which Gajardo takes with her when she leaves the space. She has also held critique class with the class she attends at the academy, just like her collaborator on this project Iranian musician Melodi Soltani, has brought her music students from Turning Tables Brøndby strand down to the space.
Call Center for the displaced. Photo: Amanda Bødker.
Call Center for the displaced. Photo: Amanda Bødker.
The Call Center – an artistic alliance with musician Melodi Soltani
This collective nature has been fundamental to the project ever since Welden Gajardo invited Soltani to participate in an artistic collaboration with her. For Call Center for the displaced Soltani made a sound piece open for all to experience inside a broom cabinet behind All all all’s archive.
The piece binds the two artist’s different but shared stories together through a conversation on the backdrop of waiting tones originating from all around the world. While this sound piece is always public, a central part of the work is the room’s practical function, where members of what Soltani and Welden Gajardo call a tribe of second generation diasporic descendants can book a time slot, use the facilities – an ipad, tea, and company if wanted, to call home. This mixture of functions within the exhibition, hopeful as it is, is a very complex one. Although both artists have spoken to several people for whom the Call Center could represent an opportunity to have a needed moment of peace and communal sharing of this specific experience, it has, as of yet, stayed at the talk. It has proven difficult to activate the space collectively in this way, a challenge I think works on several levels:
Communicating how the space works and that it works, for the people who could be interested is a challenge to begin with for a small endeavor that does not have resources to carry out a big PR strategy (for the second residency All all all has received less than half of the funding than what we had for our opening show, which means stretching every penny, prioritizing pay and means to create),
but also fundamentally – where, how, and when do we best reach people? When we realized that personal, individual outreach was the most gentle and relevant way of letting people know about the Call Center, we also faced the task of making sure they knew and felt that it was a safe space for them, and that it could act in an amorphous way, accommodating either a need for privacy or someone to talk to about homesickness and sorrow. This is difficult as people are not used to the art space providing feelings of safety for minoritized experiences.
This points to a general challenge when trying to make artistic spaces and processes whose main point is to soften the borders of the art institution and negotiate its purpose as a place that can provide both care for the personal, vulnerable experience of the artist, and the public (sometimes specific publics), and still be grounded in artistic experience. That the two have the possibility to meet and be the same.
Photo: All all all.
Photo: All all all.
The artists behind Mapping the displaced were of course aware of these challenges when we started. Navigating them has been determined by what we learned on a daily basis, but also by what was possible emotionally and practically for the lives lived in- and outside of the project.
When All all all facilitates a space “of care for the artist and their community”, we also risk that the work of being this provider is passed on and becomes the work of the artist. This is something this residency has made known and that has worked into both our and also our visitors’ conscience, and that we take with us as a new awareness. The collective work comes with relief, but also just that – work.
Sidsel in the resting space. Photo: All all all.
Newest in All all all: Care Rider Writing Session and finissage
During the exhibition Welden Gajardo published what she calls a care rider, detailing basic should-be-matter-of-course wishes for art institutions’ engagement with artists and especially minoritized artists. A very important work. On the 16th of December, the day before we close Mapping the displaced, we host a Care Rider Writing Session open for artworkers to drop in and write with us. Specifically we want to welcome non-cis, queer, bipoc, an other minoritized art workers, who would like to write their important addition to the care rider, anonymously or in groups.
We will send this knowledge to I DO ART, so it can expand. There will be notepads, tea, music, and people to talk to, if you’d like. After the writing session we will serve dumplings and beers, and celebrate the last evening of the exhibition – and maybe have a little dance.
We hope you would like to join us!
Friday 16th December, 2022.
Writing session: 17.00-18.00.
Finissage, dumplings and beer 18.00-20.00
All all all, Læderstræde 15,
1201 Copenhagen
All the best,
On behalf of All all all,
Klara Li
All all all is a residency based exhibition space that wants to challenge ideas of the finished art product, facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and investigate art practices of care.
