BELONGING TO A PLACE

AN EXHIBITION BY FOGO ISLAND ARTS BELONGING TO A PLACE AN EXHIBITION BY FOGO ISLAND ARTS

JUNE 22 to SEPTEMBER 23, 2017 SCRAP METAL Belonging to a Place: An Exhibition by Fogo Island Arts

A unique collaboration between Art en Valise, Fogo Island Arts and Scrap Metal, Belonging to a Place is an exhibition by three Canadian organizations that have come together to realize this poetic, forward- thinking project based on shared values.

Belonging to a Place features works by a selection of international artists who are alumni or forthcoming participants of the Fogo Island Arts residency program.

Curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen, Director of Kunsthalle Wien and Strategic Director of Fogo Island Arts and the Shorefast Foundation, the exhibition at Scrap Metal gallery aligns the interests, goals and objectives of all of three parties involved. Presenting sculpture, installation, film, video, painting, performance and works on paper, Belonging to a Place takes on a diverse, experimental and critical approach to contemporary art, its presentation and discussion. BELONGING TO A PLACE

How do we connect with a place? The space to which “a place” could refer is rather open: material, How do we belong to a plurality of places? immaterial or occupying somewhere in-between. Could “belonging to Are we all looking for someplace to belong? a place” signify, for instance, the property of a body, a place in one’s mind or within collective thought? Belonging to a place could be An exhibition is a place where questions are brought forward; a place understood as a kinship to a site of worship or a political conviction; where narratives unfold that are at once distinct from reality and intimately it may speak to a place in one’s heart or one’s family heritage. connected to it. In this capacity, Belonging to a Place: An Exhibition by Fogo Island Arts sets the stage where notions of “place” play out. Belonging to a Place draws upon memories, on movement, and their material traces. Perspectives of exile, migration, exclusion and inclusion, The exhibition departs from a consideration of the idea of “place,” isolation and solidarity are explored. At play in the works on view is the seeking to examine where we feel we belong and how we relate to role of history in moulding collective and personal understandings of multiple notions of belonging. belonging. The fragility of memory, the forging of potential futures and One place in particular comes to the fore—the unique locale of thoughtful articulations of present-day concerns are probed by way Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador. However, the works of cutting out the chaos of former times or of today—fragmenting or presented do not speak solely of Fogo Island but of other places as creating forms that convey new interpretations on that which is to belong. well, raising ideas on the complexity of the fabric that fashions and In this theatrical realm of representation and contemplation, ecology, situates places in constant transformation. Whether shaped by the geology, people and the political economy are the protagonists. The singular experience of time spent on the island or informed by other poetic power of place serves as a backdrop. The artists creatively places—physical and psychological, immaterial and imaginary— engage with materials, symbols and signs that point to notions of the artists’ works in the exhibition propose new ways of looking at, belonging in a globalized world. unlearning, and rewriting our past, present and possible futures. Today, belonging somewhere, anywhere, is a topic pondered, contested In view of historical and current political posturing, namely through and debated. Notions of place for any single individual are inextricably the channels of nationalism connected to land, culture and to the linked to the places she or he has been, as well as by the images and singular and abstract notion of place, the exhibition points to themes of accounts of places witnessed or imagined. The works in the exhibition territories inscribed by state powers as well as by the social, economic prompt and perform these ideas of place, of displacement, the familiar and geographical factors that shape them. In addition, to speak of people and the foreign, family and society, community and nationality, fantasy and place, whether in terms of communities or individuals, is to consider and our global reality. identity. Can one person truly belong to one place? And if “a place” presupposes a space, then what exactly constitutes the space to which “a place” refers? Nicolaus Schafhausen, Curator On a global level, the singular place implied could amount to the whole planet. Humanity, it can be said, belongs to our same, shared world: the physical environment and the ecosystems sustaining it, as well as the man-made, architecturally defined spaces of humans. Rootedness therefore meets multi-centredness, the personal meets the public, and the national meets the international, global world.

However, is there a global without the local? Does a place not call forth a specific site or location? ABBAS AKHAVAN

Study for a Garden, 2013 - ongoing Abbas Akhavan was born in 1977 in Tehran. He studied at Concordia Cedar trees University, Montreal and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Dimensions variable Akhavan’s residencies include Foundation Marcelino Botin with Mona Courtesy of the artist Hatoum (Spain); Le Printemps de Septembre (France); Trinity Square Video, Western Front and Fogo Island Arts (Canada); The Watermill Center Abbas Akhavan’s practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral (USA); and The Delfina Foundation (Dubai, UAE & London, UK). Recent installations to drawing, video, sculpture and performance. The direction exhibitions include: Burning down the house at the Gwangju Biennale of his research has been deeply influenced by the specificity of the (2014); Variations on a Garden, Galerie Mana, Istanbul (2013); Study sites where he works: the architectures that house them, the economies for a Garden, Delfina Foundation, London (2012); Tactics for Here & that surround them, and the people that frequent them. The domestic Now, Bucharest Biennale (2012); Tools for Conviviality, Power Plant, sphere, as a forked space between hospitality and hostility, has been Toronto (2012); Beacon, Darling Foundry, Montreal (2012); Phantomhead, an ongoing area of research in his practice. More recent works have Performa 11, New York (2011); and Seeing is Believing, KW Institute for shifted focus, wandering onto spaces and species just outside the Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011). Akhavan is the recipient of Kunstpreis home—the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes. Berlin (2012), TFVA finalist prize (2012), The Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014), the Sobey Art Award (2015), and the Fellbach Triennial Award (2016). He lives and works in Toronto and Istanbul.

We domesticate the real all the time, in order to comprehend it.

Abbas Akhavan. “It’s a Kind of Domesticated Wilderness: An Interview with Abbas Akhavan” by Marina Lorden, Jadaliyya (2016) NADIA BELERIQUE

Untitled [Bed Island], 2017 Belerique’s installations combining sculpture, photography and collage Installation merge old and new technologies that seem to echo one another and Dimensions variable oscillate between image and object. The focus of the gaze and the bodily Courtesy of the artist experience within her works are crucial elements she engages with and manipulates to astonishing efect. In and out of focus, sharp and soft, rough and smooth—all juxtapositions and contradictions one could use to describe the often disorienting, Based in Toronto, Nadia Belerique constructs installations that engage seductive tensions at play within the work of Nadia Belerique. Sticky smears with the poetics of perception and question how images perform in on shiny surfaces, sharp and torn edges, opaque and transparent are further contemporary culture. Primarily invested in questions around materiality oppositions brought together, fractured or layered upon one another. and dematerialization through the illusion of photographs, her image- The presence of her person—the performative role behind her artistic based works are often interrupted by sculptural objects. She received production—can be found in subtle traces such as fingerprints or footprints her MFA from the University of Guelph and has exhibited at such glimpsed only from a specific viewpoint or through close inspection. venues as the Art Gallery of Hamilton; Daniel Faria Gallery, The Power Plant, and Gallery TPW, Toronto; 221A, Vancouver, and Kunsthalle During her three-month residency with Fogo Island Arts in 2015, Belerique Wien. Belerique is on the long-list for the 2017 Sobey Art Award. began working on what would become the solo exhibition Bed Island, held in Toronto in 2016. Since then she has continued to build on ideas that are present within the pieces, and to draw connections to her All photographs are a hand and an index finger, pointing to experience on Fogo Island. The works from Bed Island and the subsequent something else. iteration Bed Island (Don’t Sleep) depart from the consideration of the body as an island, and the bed as an extension of that island. Nadia Belerique The bed is a place of rest, passion, dreams and melancholy. It carries with it intimate psychological connotations and can be viewed as a psychic space. As with much of Belerique’s work, the understanding of any space implies both positive and negative connotations, examined from a visual or photographic perspective or through interpretative aspects. The everyday, mostly found elements upon her table/bed sculptures, for instance, are staged and allude to identities.

Belerique’s work also draws on her time as a photo editor at The Toronto Star, during which she sifted through and scanned the newspaper’s vast black and white archives. With the creation of her own analogue scanner bed, composed of a pane of frosted glass with a light source above, Belerique experimented with alternative scanning and photographic methods to produce a rich range of images, and later, sculptures. The structure she devised was raised high enough for her to be able to position herself beneath it and look up, inverting the typical process of a scanner and creating a wholly diferent, bodily relationship to the image. MARLENE CREATES

Sea Ice, Conception Bay, Newfoundland, March 2014, 2014 Following pummy, more scattered bits of ice fill the frame until larger pans HD video projection, 14:14 min. of ice float past showing clumpets. Imagery of the various ice formations Marlene Creates: concept, camera, director and their terms proceeds at a rapid, rhythmic pace, and the motion, Christopher Darlington: video editing while slightly disorientating at first, succeeds in allowing a certain degree Courtesy of Paul Petro Contemporary Art of mental freedom in mapping the flux of visual information. Sea Ice, Conception Bay, Newfoundland, March 2014 visually, textually, sonically Marlene Creates’s hypnotic video was shot in a single, continuous take and, most prominently, kinaesthetically, translates place to person. from the ferry that links Portugal Cove to Bell Island, Newfoundland. Filmed Marlene Creates is an environmental artist and poet who lives and during a winter in which the salt water of Conception Bay froze for the first works in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador. Underlying all her time in decades, the work captures an astounding variety of diferent forms work, spanning almost four decades, is an interest in place—not as a of ice, accompanied by descriptive terms such as tippy pans, raftering geographical location but as a process that involves memory, multiple ice, and slob. Creates gathered over 80 such terms in the Newfoundland narratives, ecology, language, and both scientific and vernacular and Labrador dialect that identify specific conditions of ice and snow. knowledge. Since 2002 her principal artistic venture has been to closely Creates frames the sea from a viewpoint that looks directly over the side observe and work with one particular place—the six acres of boreal forest of the ferry. The boat itself remains out of shot, and the proximity of the where she lives. Creates’s work has been presented in over 350 solo and lens to the surface of the water and the ice allows for a concentrated group exhibitions and screenings across Canada and internationally. view of the seascape. The sound of the wind that bustles and blows Exhibitions in 2017 include What Came to Light at Blast Hole Pond River, merges with the noise of the lapping water and the thrum of the Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto; Photography in Canada: 1960-2000, engine, enhancing the experience of perceiving local or bay ice. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; To the Blast Hole Pond River, Fogo Island Gallery, Newfoundland; and the retrospective Marlene Creates: Frothy white ripples of waves appear to flow upward, spuming out from the Places, Paths, and Pauses at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton. bottom of the frame before drifting to the left. The spume breaks and meets She is the recipient of numerous awards including the CARFAC National with a calmer surface in the middle ground of the shot, and a thin ridge of Visual Arts Advocate Award (2009); the BMW Exhibition Prize at the water forms a type of horizon between the whiteness of the swell and the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto (2013); and the darkness of the greater sea it meets. Soon enough, the smooth calm of the Grand Jury Award at the Yosemite International Film Festival (2014). Born water in the upper ground is punctuated by bits of ice, accompanied by the in Montreal, Creates has lived in Newfoundland since 1985—the home of word pummy. As Creates explains in her book Brickle, Nish, and Knobbly: A her maternal ancestors, who were from Lewisporte and Fogo Island. Newfoundland Treasury of Terms for Ice and Snow (2015), “Ice broken into a mixture of chunks and slush is said to be crushed all to a pummy.”

Creates’s Treasury—usually a term used to describe a collection of highly I found over 80 terms for diferent conditions of ice and snow in the valued poems—was created to commemorate the highly specific and Newfoundland dialect. [...] What’s behind these terms is a way of poetic terms for ice and snow in the Newfoundland dialect. Linguistically experiencing and knowing the world. They register an attention to complex, the terms are awash with evocative, sonic, practical and the land and the sea. But this vocabulary is now a fragile intangible lyrical resonance. Some of the terms date back to 17th-century English, artifact. The loss of local linguistic complexity is a result of major brought to Newfoundland by the settlers, while others arose from changes in Newfoundland and Labrador, particularly the decline of their engagement with the specific environment and climate. the fishery as an occupation. And these terms are fragile for another reason—climate change.

Marlene Creates GEORGE VAN DAM

Partita for Solo Violin N°2 in D Minor BWV 1004 George van Dam is a violinist and composer. He has worked with Johann Sebastian Bach leading contemporary composers as a soloist and with contemporary music ensembles such as Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, MusikFabrik George van Dam’s opening night performance of Bach’s Partita and Ictus, of which he is one of the founding members. His for Solo Violin N°2 in D Minor (1720) departs from a consideration compositions include chamber music, song cycles, a concerto for of the exhibition title. “Belonging to a place” appears both to violin and timbila-orchestra, and music for film, theatre and dance question belonging by its open ambiguity, and at the same time performances. In 2012, he resumed studying the harpsichord with proclaim to be a specific site. As noted by van Dam, the etymology Robert Kohnen, Ketil Haugsand, Bob van Asperen and Elisabeth Joyé. of the German word for “belonging” bears a connection with the Van Dam’s frequent collaborations with visual artists such as Manon word “hearing.” Gehören translates as “to belong,” while the root de Boer, Angela Bulloch and Trudo Engels and choreographers of the word hören means “to hear.” Van Dam found it intriguing Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Wim Vandekeybus have led to a to consider how one might belong to music. As a violinist and diverse output including film projects and compositions for stage, composer who began studying music at an early age, music is installation works and live performances. Recent and upcoming both the place and space where van Dam feels he most belongs. projects include scores for Burning Out, a documentary film In viewing “place” as “space,” it follows to consider space as by Jérôme Le Maire; Mon Ange, a feature film by Harry Cleven; “time-space”—the space that music inhabits. Reflecting on and Mitra, a cine-opera that will premiere in Brussels in May 2018. various conceptions of the relationship between music and space, particularly those presented in the work of composer and architect Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), such as his polytopes Bach is a master of counterpoint and harmony. Inspired by the science that fused light, sound, performance and architecture, van Dam of numbers, he succeeds in associating rigour and balance with formal arrived at the conclusion to play a composition by Bach. and rhythmic creativity. Not only does the Second Partita reveal the polyphonic potential of the violin, it also unfolds in a singular space- The set of six works that comprise Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas time while carrying dramatic force and emotional depth. for Solo Violin are quintessential within the violin repertoire. The stylistic innovation and mathematical precision of Bach’s polyphonic “Partita Partagée,” a concert-lecture by George van Dam and compositions account for his work’s revered musical complexity. Isabelle Dumont, with new works by Adrien Lucca, La Loge (2015) The first four movements in the second Partita correspond to Baroque dance forms: the Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue; all forms of movement within a space. The concluding Chaconne of the second Partita unfolds as a free variation on top of a multi-measure repeating bass figure. Spiritually and emotionally powerful, the movement comprises thirty-two variations, with ten in a major key in the middle of the piece. It is a meditation on the relationship between music, people, time and space. BRENDA DRANEY

Aspen, 2013 Aspen, notably devoid of any aspen trees, portrays three evergreen Oil on linen, 4 x 5 ft trees almost completely stripped of their leaves, representing those that remained following a massive forest fire in Slave Lake Intensive Care, 2016 in 2011, a trauma that resonates in many of her works. The subject Oil on linen, 4 x 5 ft of Intensive Care, while extremely personal, also alludes to and Courtesy of the artist encourages broader emotional resonance with the fragility of The work of Brenda Draney is intimately connected to remembering, human life, with care, empathy, concern and protection for family, bridging individual stories with broader conceptions of collective friends and neighbours. Pointing to the experiences of the Northern memory. Growing up between the northern community of Slave Lake Alberta community, from natural disasters to political developments, and Edmonton, Alberta, much of her artistic practice draws from Draney’s works combine profound personal and collective histories her past and the communities that have shaped her. Powerful and that are ultimately left open, allowing others to relate to them. striking, her paintings on linen and canvas portray landscapes and Brenda Draney holds a BA in English and a BFA in Painting from the relationships with people in the places where she grew up. Conscious University of Alberta, as well as an MA from the Emily Carr University of of shared emotions, struggles, and messages to be articulated and Art and Design. The 11th winner of the annual RBC Canadian Painting visualised, Draney mines her own territory to provide entry points Competition in 2009, Draney was also a finalist for the 2016 Sobey for others to be able to connect. It is a way for her to balance the Art Award. Her work has been exhibited at The Power Plant, Toronto specificities of the personal to broach the people; to point to aspects International Art Fair and MKG127 Gallery, Toronto, and was recently of life, the environments we inhabit, and the roots that connect us. included in 90X90: Celebrating Art in Alberta at the Art Gallery of A theme that threads through much of her work relates to an Alberta. Draney is Cree from Sawridge First Nation, situated by the town understanding of “provisional structures,” both in a practical and of Slave Lake, Alberta. Her practice is based on her experiences and metaphorical sense. We can all be said to build temporary support the relationships formed between her current hometown of Edmonton structures following hardships; we construct frames or networks to and the northern community of Slave Lake, where she was raised. address dificulties and to protect our vulnerabilities, if only provisionally. In this regard, Draney’s paintings reflect on how individuals and communities embark on processes of rebuilding after traumatic events, I’m always trying to get closer to true. marked by a resourcefulness in approaching their circumstances. Brenda Draney Often working without preliminary sketches, Draney paints with an immediacy that aims to translate past experiences from the cloudy realm of memory. Distinguished by striking minimalist compositions and the controlled use of paint in calculated gestures, her works may speak of disaster, destruction and displacement. Through the exposure of raw linen or canvas left untouched by paint, she creates vacant spaces that at first appear ambiguous or unfinished. However, these carefully considered voids underscore what has been forgotten: an absence of place or presence. The gaps within the surface plane of the painting invite viewers to bring their own memories into perception in order to complete the interpreted narrative or reconstruct their own. Reflecting our imperfect memories, the blank spots in the works signal the impossibility of reconstructing history completely. ASLAN GAISUMOV

Volga, 2015 Aslan Gaisumov (1991, Grozny) graduated from the Institute of HD Video, colour, 4:11 min. Contemporary Art in Moscow in 2012 and is currently attending the Courtesy of the artist Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. His solo exhibitions to date include People of No Consequence (2016), Museum of Modern Aslan Gaisumov’s work is concerned with mediating the disregarded Art Antwerp (M HKA); Memory Belongs to the Stones (2015), KROMUS history of the Chechen people, articulating the hardship and + ZINK, Berlin; When You Ride in a Chechen Cart, Sing a Chechen sufering they endured over a centuries-long conflict with Russia. Song (2015), Contemporary Art Center, Grozny; Untitled (War) (2011), This history is one that current powerful figures, in politics and Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow. Gaisumov has the media, are all too eager to brush over. The glittering facades participated in numerous group exhibitions including I am a native of newly constructed high-rise buildings in central Grozny, the foreigner (2017), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Lives Between capital of the Chechen republic, gloss over the traces of heavy (2017), Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Uncertain States (2016), shelling during the two Chechen wars (1994-96 and 1999-2009). Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Lines of Tangency (2015), Museum of The German composite word Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Fine Arts (MSK), Ghent; Austeria (2015), BWA Sokol Gallery, Nowy meaning the “struggle to overcome the trauma of the past,” Sącz, Poland; Glasstress Gotika (2015), a collateral exhibition for has no equivalent in Chechen or Russian but provides a the 56th Venice Biennale; Burning News (2014), Hayward Gallery, lens through which to examine Gaisumov’s oeuvre, which London; The World in 2014 (2014), Ullens Center for Contemporary can be seen as an attempt to contribute to a much needed Art, Beijing; 5th Moscow Biennale, More Light (2013); Under A Tinsel Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the Soviet and post-Soviet context. Sun (2013), 3rd Moscow Biennale for Young Art; and I Am Who I Am (2012), Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf. In 2014 he was awarded In Volga, Gaisumov negotiates the significance of an exodus the Special Prize of the Future Generation Art Prize of the Pinchuk experienced firsthand. In a quiet gesture, employing measured, Art Centre in Kiev, and in 2016 he received the Innovation Prize straightforward imagery that unfolds within the still frame of the of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow, in the camera during a single take, the short video work restages his New Generation category. Gaisumov lives and works in Grozny. own family’s escape from the bombings in Grozny in 1995 during the first Chechen war. Twenty relatives squeeze into an old Volga automobile; the simple, almost slapstick scene of their will and Be it on the scale of a short car journey or an interstate trip, this is the flight gives a personal rendering of the drastic experience of space confined by the points of the multiple departures and arrivals forced migration. Devoid of voiceover and opening credits, or of peoples with their cultures, sharing their experience of parting any explicit statement of the familial narrative, the work remains with one and encountering others—life on the strangers’ side of the open to interpretation. Aligned with past and current experiences world we all call home and the inability to finally call it this name. of millions of people around the world, the protagonists could be chance travel companions. Physically and mentally unsettled and Elena Yaichnicova, Moscow-based independent curator and critic uncertain about future destinations, encounters and departures, they share a common search for shelter and a new place to call home. FLAKA HALITI

Ugly Fishes of Fogo, 2015 Based in Munich, Flaka Haliti (1982, Prishtina) studied at the University of Series of 30 framed drawings, paint, chalk on paper Prishtina and Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, and is currently working Dimensions variable toward her Ph.D. at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her artistic Private collection practice is based on conceptual ideas and relates in its critical analyses of media and society to her distinctly European perspective. In 2015, Flaka Haliti’s wide-ranging practice often employs bright colours and she represented Kosovo at the 56th Venice Biennale in an exhibition symbolically charged sculptural forms and materials. Whether working curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen. Haliti’s work has been presented at in installation, sculpture, video or drawing, her approach is shaped by Museum Mumok, Vienna; Museum Lenbachhaus, Munich; Kunsthalle experimental ideas that comment subtly on socio-political concerns. Wien; 6th Moscow Biennial; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; Haliti’s humorously titled series Ugly Fishes of Fogo was created during Kosovo Art Gallery, Prishtina; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Haus der Kulturen der her month-long residency with Fogo Island Arts in 2015. Each drawing Welt, Berlin; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; and Galerie Rüdiger Schoettle, vividly renders a fish in an array of colours, shapes and sizes. These fish Munich, among others. She is a winner of the ars viva Prize 2016; Villa hail from the waters surrounding Fogo Island, from the artist’s imagination Romana Prize 2016; Muslim Mulliqi award 2014; Henkel Art Award 2013; and direct experience, and from her Internet searches for data-informed and Städelschule and Rentenbank’s Agriculture and Banking Prize 2010. opinions on “ugly fish.” Yet what are these “ugly fish,” and in whose estimate are they ugly? What does the notion “ugly” really relate to?

Haliti’s collection of works on paper began after she was shown a Any mention of cod is political; the word as a symbol brings up a whole photograph of a sculpin, a fish described as particularly “ugly.” Some history of an economy. days later, she saw a member of the orange, wide-mouthed, bulbous Flaka Haliti species on a fishing excursion, during which it was caught and promptly returned to the sea with the proclamation “another ugly fish!”

According to the inhabitants of Fogo Island, there is only one aquatic species that merits the title of “fish,” or “the fish of all fishes.” The rest are ugly by comparison, which is to say, devoid of value other than perhaps a chuckle or grin. As the phrase “in Cod we trust” aptly illustrates, there is a profound respect and a rich heritage associated with cod. Ugly Fishes of Fogo emerged from Haliti’s continual encounter with fish while in residence, and reflects her growing understanding of its legacy in relation to the island’s economy and values.

The closure of the Northern cod fishery in 1992 ended almost 500 years of fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador, and with it, a way of life that had sustained communities for generations. Twenty-five years on, new ventures are taking place—nets thrown, to follow the metaphor, to catch and provide alternative solutions for economic and cultural viability. Haliti’s fish, both real and imagined, could be taken to hint at the positive outlook Fogo Island Arts and the Shorefast Foundation have towards the future. In celebrating “ugly” fish, Haliti’s work circles back as a celebration of cod, and the strong relationship between people, land and sea. STEFFEN JAGENBURG

Joe Batt’s Arm, 2013 (cover) Jagenburg’s artistic practice as a photographer has been shaped by his Farewell, 2013 own experiences of the world as well as by seeing the world reflected Shoal Bay, 2013 in the people who inhabit it. Just as gradients of colour seep into other Kate, 2013 shades and tones, so too do characters and situations meld with their Haze II, 2013 environments, creating a unique harmony that he seeks to capture Weather, 2013 photographically. His outlook is marked by transient moments and the Deep Bay II, 2013 selves that people portray in brief instances. His recent work strives Deep Bay III, 2013 to push beyond his previous preoccupations with portraiture and Long Walk, 2013 landscape, framing nature and elements from the social environments Seabird, 2013 we inhabit, as well as the traces people leave behind. Interested in Deep Bay IV, 2013 interpreting traditional conceptions of beauty, Jagenburg is curious Deep Bay I, 2013 about the so-called banal, the everyday, and the “trash” we tend to Haze I, 2013 avoid, reflecting on how to address society’s challenges and strengths. Rock, 2013 Stefen Jagenburg was born and raised in Cologne. Inspired by the Ranger, 2013 art scene in the city from an early age, his photographic practice Series of 15 photographs developed from his will to speak with and understand other creative, Dimensions variable like-minded people. Self-taught, he uses photography as a means to get Courtesy of the artist closer to people and share ideas, while executing his own conceptual Stefen Jagenburg’s selection of photographs for the exhibition, presented framework and rules. In applying these capacities he has been able to in this booklet, are drawn from his time spent on Fogo Island in 2013 continually reinvent his work, from personal to contextual and corporate documenting the FIA Residency Program and the surrounding landscape. communication projects. He has photographed material for a number He focused attentively on artists’ individual practices, while also pursuing of institutions around the world such as the Heinrich Böll Foundation, his own artistic interests and experiences on the island. His portraits aim Berlin; Shorefast Foundation, Fogo Island; Kunsthalle Wien; Volksbühne, to capture some essential character of his subjects, while other images Berlin; and Witte de With, Rotterdam; among others. Jagenburg has from the series reflect his observations on the overwhelming power and been working on a larger artistic project over the past two years majesty of the landscape over multiple visits to the island. Jagenburg’s entitled Boys in the Trees, exploring the exchange between humans work with artists such as Kate Newby, Silke Otto-Knapp and Zin Taylor and nature. Jagenburg lives in the countryside just outside of Berlin. was deeply engaged in aiming to understand their own practices and observe from their perspectives in order to make their stories visible. I think people and places have an aura, and you can find it in light, Absorbing the atmosphere over multiple seasons, the weather also had a honest moments if you look closely... profound efect on Jagenburg’s contact with the island. Stuck inside due to heavy snowfall or caught up in turbulent wind when outdoors, his arranged Stefen Jagenburg meetings or the photographic rules he had set for himself were frequently overwritten and ultimately determined by the myriad weather conditions— an aspect so overpowering he has rarely, if at all, come across since.

LEON KAHANE

W.B. 86, 2017 Born in Berlin, Leon Kahane grew up in the former German Democratic 12 framed photographs Republic (GDR). His artistic practice is closely linked to his family history which is one of Jewish Holocaust survivors who came back to Germany. Reports of my assimilation are greatly exaggerated, 2016 Kahane studied at the Ostkreuz School of Photography Berlin and the Berlin Dabouki/Baladi grape vines, grow lights, rack system University of the Arts. His video and photographic works address themes Courtesy of the artist such as migration and political protest from a conceptual perspective Leon Kahane’s works embrace a wide range of media, from performative that examines the complexity of visual media as a document of social practices to a variety of highly symbolic sculptural and spatial elements. reality. Kahane lives in Berlin and Tel Aviv, two cities with very diferent Departing from political considerations or seeking to challenge tradition, backgrounds that determine and propel his multifaceted approach. his works engage with ideas relating to the transformative, evolving nature of culture and how it must constantly be reshaped in order to facilitate freedom. The situation or condition of art is an indicator of how democratic a W.B. 86 is a selection of twelve black and white photographs from a larger place is. There can be no freedom of art in an un-free system. series taken of West Berlin by Leon Kahane’s father, André Kahane. The title derives from the labels his father gave to the negatives, marking Leon Kahane the date of the trip in 1986. Akin to an island itself André entered the territory of West Berlin illegally following a long, carefully calculated journey from the East. Leon Kahane was around the age of one when his father, a typographer, visited West Berlin, which was experiencing a “wild west” of sorts, promoted by the punk scene and hedonistic attitudes.

Captivated by the “free” culture, and by what he saw in stark contrast to the aesthetic language and graphic design prevalent in the East, André Kahane sought to document the signs, advertisements and shop windows that he came across in the West. Despite a risky and dangerous endeavour to shoot and then return with film that stood as evidence of his illegal journey, André was eager to record and share his experiences with trusted friends and family members on the other side of the wall. Details of bright neon signs and mannequins in flashy 80s clothing, hair and makeup were remarkably diferent from their post-Soviet counterparts.

The array of photographs underline Leon Kahane’s continued interest in the image as a means of free expression. Whether analogue or digital, captured in secret or publicly posted online, photographs taken by individuals transmit profound personal histories as much as political ones. Images like those in W.B. 86 hold an extraordinary capacity to retell stories, portray particular times and places (namely the heady days of a capitalist boom and a country in transition), and to incite debate and reflection on the current political situation. They reflect how our environments and their symbols factor into our everyday circumstances. Kahane frames the city of Berlin and points to how diferent systems and politics greatly influence and impact personal and collective identities. EDGAR LECIEJEWSKI

Aves (2003-2009) Based in Leipzig, Edgar Leciejewski explores the various social and scientific 9 framed photographs, C-print on alu dibond uses of photography, employing an experimental, analytic approach to the 50 x 40 cm medium by using various techniques and media. His work investigates such Courtesy of the artist issues as the rhetoric of the photographic series, genre, composition, and the question of how much time can fit within a single photographic image. Edgar Leciejewski’s artistic practice focuses on the manifold applications Leciejewski’s photographs are repositories of time that allow for a slowing of photography. He investigates and interrogates the medium in an down of the act of seeing. His work has been presented at Witte de With Center experimental and often sharply analytical fashion that flirts with a pursuit for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Kunsthalle of precision reminiscent of Occam’s razor, summarized by Wittgenstein, Wien; Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig; Fogo Island Gallery, Canada; in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), as “If a sign is not necessary Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and Inman Gallery, Houston; among others. then it is meaningless.”

In his series Aves, Leciejewski seizes notions of necessity and objectivity in scientific visualization. “Aves” is the Latin word for birds, and the entire I think photographs are about traces of the real. My experiences flow directly group of photographs portrays a succession of individual dead birds into my work. I explore my immediate environment through the medium. that have been digitally scanned. Leciejewski came across the birds Edgar Leciejewski. “Edgar Leciejewski in Conversation with Nicolaus unexpectedly, lying lifeless on the streets of the city in which he lived, and Schafhausen” published in Tones (2017) retrieved them one by one from the concrete or tarmac surfaces of the urban landscape. The photographs capture and immortalize the fated end of these feathered creatures, manipulated by the artist into powerful poses and gestures that lie somewhere between life and death, flight and fall.

The photographic prints, or “scanographs,” reference eighteenth century illustrations from encyclopedic publications. In contrast to the photograms that replaced them, with the triumphal arrival of so- called “scientific” photography, these illustrations did not claim to depict their object in an unafected and purely objective manner; instead they acknowledged the creative and interpretative products of artistic intervention. Hyper-precise, simultaneously highly aestheticized and rather abstract representations, the selection of images from Leciejewski’s Aves series unmasks the intrinsically subjective, interpretative, and corrective impetus of the photographic lens.

Leciejewski’s works in the exhibition also stem from direct observations he makes in relation to his environment, conceiving of photography as containing an inextricable connection to reality. One of the many fascinating aspects of his six-month residency on Fogo Island was the experience of life in an environment in which the communion with nature features so remarkably. Perhaps the choice to present Aves within the context of Belonging to a Place appropriately mediates a counterpoint to this relationship, acting as a swan song for birds that have fallen prey to the inhospitality of urban settings. SARAH MORRIS

Finite and Infinite Games, 2017 Since the late 1990s, artist Sarah Morris has produced a large body HD-Video, colour, sound, 40:16 min. of work using both painting and film, which create a new language of Courtesy of the artist place and politics. International solo exhibitions include Petzel, New York (2017); Kunsthalle Wien (2016); Le Consortium de Dijon, Paris The work of Sarah Morris points to societal forces and relations (2016); Dirimart, Istanbul (2016); M Museum, Leuven (2015); Kunsthalle at play: power structures and systems of control, their shifts, Bremen (2013); Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot (2012); Wexner contradictions, and the ways in which forms of power are Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2012); Museum für Moderne reproduced or (re)appropriated as symbols of capital. Drawing from Kunst in Frankfurt (2009); Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2009); architecture, urban planning, and strategies from these fields such Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (2008); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005); as scale and abstraction, her practice, whether embodied by her Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2005); Nationalgalerie im Hamburger painting or film, employs the framework of the city or the story of a Bahnhof and Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2001); Kunsthalle Zürich certain figure to expound on personalities, places and politics. (2000); Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1999). Collecting institutions Finite and Infinite Games, shot with German philosopher and fellow include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of filmmaker Alexander Kluge, takes these concerns and combines Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern and Victoria & Albert Museum, them with reflections on artistic practice itself. The title derives London; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Miami Art Museum; from a book of the same name by American scholar James P. Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York; Centre Carse. First published in 1986, the book explores the possibilities Pompidou, Paris; Collection, London and Fondazione Prada, Milan. and repercussions of approaching society and life as either a finite activity with set rules, winners and losers, or an infinite one, played for the sake of continuing playing and thus navigating negotiable No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. rules. Throughout the film Kluge reads out excerpts of Finite and James P. Carse. Finite and Infinite Games (1986) Infinite Games from a script devised by Morris. Between these readings, Kluge—encouraged by Morris—goes of-script, and reflects freely on their meaning in conjunction with elaborations on his own intellectual background—namely the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and his practice as a filmmaker, informed by such heritage. These deliberations are merged with hypnotic video sequences that portray the Elbphilharmonie concert hall, recently constructed on the waterfront of Hamburg, and imagery of the busy industrial harbour.

In a seeming example of an infinite game performed by Morris and Kluge within the finite game of the film, the roles are reversed for a brief moment towards the end of the film, when Morris finds herself reflecting on her own practice in light of Carse and Kluge’s words. Morris negotiates the place of art and of the artist in society, showcasing the fragile sense of belonging that arises between Kluge and herself, mediated by the type of media used and the depth of the intellectual considerations they share in their practice as artists and filmmakers. KATE NEWBY

Let me be the wind that pulls your hair, 2017 My list of places to drop in on regularly was first exhibited at the Porcelain, black clay, cobblestone glaze Sculpture Center, New York. Each piece was made from wax and then Dimensions variable cast; every single one is thus a discrete, original thing, and not made from a mould. A quiet noise resonates when each element, resembling My list of places to drop in on regularly, 2017 a tiny bell, knocks against another. Similar to the porcelain wind Hand-dyed cotton rope, hand-dyed silk thread, pink silver, silver, chime, My list of places to drop in on regularly also responds to the white brass, bronze wind and to people brushing past the work: to shifts in conditions. Dimensions variable The temporary nature of Newby’s subtle interventions can be taken, Skimming stones formed by clapping hands, 2017 Porcelain, stoneware, glaze in one respect, to underscore the experience of a fleeting moment. Dimensions variable Open to manifold interpretations, the artist’s quirky, enigmatic work could also be perceived as portraying a sense of fragility and Let the other thing in, 2012-2013 preciousness. Based on direct observations, and inspired by poetry, Posters the banality in her practice becomes rather transcendent. Courtesy of Cooper Cole, Toronto Kate Newby was born in 1979 in Auckland and lives in Brooklyn. She Kate Newby’s installations are intimate engagements with specific works with installation, textile, ceramics, casting and glass. She received spaces. Often finding form as handcrafted pieces that respond to her DocFA and MFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University spatial environments, events and the people that surround her, as of Auckland. In 2012 she was awarded the prestigious Walter’s Prize by well as to local materials and available resources, her methodology international judge Mami Kataoka, chief curator at the Mori Musuem of Art displays a profound interest in the peculiarities of place. in Tokyo, Japan. Recent solo exhibitions include: Let me be the wind that Newby’s wind chime sculptural works on view address central aspects pulls your hair, Artpace, San Antonio (2017); Big Tree. Bird’s Eye, Michael of the exhibition, such as the specificities, contradictions and transitions Lett, Auckland (2016); Tuesday evening. Sunday afternoon. Stony Lake, of belonging; the manifold relations that arise between physical space Cooper Cole, Toronto (2016); The January February March, The Poor Farm, and bodily encounter; and deep considerations of the qualities and Wisconsin (2016); I memorized it I loved it so much, Laurel Gitlen, New symbolic character of materials. For Newby, the specific conditions York (2015); Let the other thing in, Fogo Island Gallery, Newfoundland of an object’s creation are inseparable from the object itself. Drawing (2012). Recent group exhibition include: The Promise, Index - The Swedish attention to the ephemeral and the minutiae of everyday life in order Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2017); In Practice: Material to disrupt conventional ways of seeing, her pieces—often radically Deviance, Sculpture Center, New York (2017); Ordering Nature, Marianne small and modest—spark curiosity, invite the viewer to look closer, and Boesky, New York (2015). During November and December 2017 Kate reflect upon more than meets the eye, or indeed, what greets the ear. will undertake a residency at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.

Let me be the wind that pulls your hair was made while Newby participated in a residency at Artpace, San Antonio. The work consists My work does not claim to have any special purchase or insight of two types of clay and glazes, and although each individual piece into the everyday, as if perceiving the extraordinary in the ordinary. falls into a general, uniform identity, they are at the same time wildly It is much more interested in preserving a certain attitude, an diferent from one another due to varying reactions of the cobblestone openness that allows for those kinds of perception to happen. glaze to the clay and temperature. Newby left this sculpture hanging in a friend’s garden for the duration of her Texas residency. Conceived Kate Newby to acknowledge the wind, the sculpture makes a soft, gentle sound. So long as there is a breeze, it remains constantly, casually, in motion. SILKE OTTO-KNAPP

A cold spring, 2012 As she explains, “It made sense for me to paint a portrait of Bishop Watercolour on linen instead of trying to make a landscape painting inspired by her approach 100 x 80 cm to landscape.” Bishop is a figure whose work evokes notions of foreign Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne places and the associated emotional impressions. Akin to Otto-Knapp’s description of the work of Bishop, who“communicates subjective The luminous, atmospheric paintings of Silke Otto-Knapp are marked by experience in what she doesn’t say,” Otto-Knapp’s own artistic practice a highly contemplative and complex artistic process. Over the years she similarly contains this ability to communicate between the clouded lines. has developed a specific method of painting, applying watercolour or water mixed with gouache to canvas and linen in multiple applications Silke Otto-Knapp (1970, Osnabrueck) completed a degree in cultural that lend her works a distinctly flat, gauze-like surface quality, devoid of studies at the University of Hildesheim, Germany and received her direct gestural traces. She handles the medium with numerous coats and MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, washes, altering and painting over previous layers to produce negative where she lived and worked until 2013. She relocated to Los Angeles spaces and outlines that recall photographic negatives. Photographs in 2014 where she is Associate Professor, Painting and Drawing at often provide the source material for Otto-Knapp’s works. The images she UCLA. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include Monotones, Mary collects and builds upon refer to specific historical moments, brought Boone Gallery, New York; Seascapes, Greengrassi, London; Land lies into a contemporary context by hazy shadows of remembrance. in water at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Monday or Tuesday at Camden Arts Centre, London; Questions of Travel at Kunsthalle Wien A cold spring is a painting after a photograph of modernist writer and Fogo Island Gallery, Newfoundland, Canada; and Geography and Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) whose work has been a wellspring of Plays at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. Her work has been inspiration for Otto-Knapp. Born in Massachusetts and orphaned at shown at Tate Britain, London; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; an early age, Bishop had an unsettled childhood, moving between Berkeley Art Museum; Migros Museum, Zürich; and Van Abbemuseum, relatives and growing up without a place of her own. She spent time Eindhoven. She is represented by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York, in Nova Scotia and later travelled to Newfoundland, recording her Galerie Buchholz, Cologne and Berlin, and greengrassi in London. experiences and precise observations in characteristically unadorned and unsentimental writing. It was on Fogo Island that Otto-Knapp returned to the work of Bishop time and again, impressed by her While working in the studio, the local landscape did not at all appear concrete use of language and approach to the landscape. Pioneering in my paintings but the experience of life on the island, which is female artists are important subjects within Otto-Knapp’s oeuvre, in physically and economically dependant on the sea, left a strong addition to an array of key motifs such as moonlit land- and seascapes, impression on me. I started reading the work of Elizabeth Bishop moments from modern dance, avant-garde stage designs and interiors. [...] In an early edition of poems titled North and South (1946), she The illusion of a space, of a place, is a constant in her work. directly refers to the landscape of the east coast of Canada with its Otto-Knapp completed a number of portraits of Bishop including A cold exposed rocky coastlines, harsh weather conditions, and rural fishing spring, named after one of her poems. In a muted palette of black, grey communities. Her use of language in poems such as “The Map” is and silver, the woman leaning from the window frame is not explicitly concrete and direct, with unsentimental descriptions of the landscape. recognisable as Bishop; she remains, as with all of Otto-Knapp’s portraits, Silke Otto-Knapp, “A Conversation between Silke Otto-Knapp faceless. Her portraits are ghosts of the receding past, and provide a and Nicolaus Schafhausen” in Silke Otto-Knapp: Questions place for solitude and projection into the worlds and people that she of Travel, Fogo Island Arts and Sternberg Press (2013), 53 depicts. Interested in the continuities of tradition, the construction of images and the ways in which they afect us, Otto-Knapp is also concerned with unearthing how moments of concentration arise. PAUL P.

Untitled, 2016 Paul P. (1977, Canada) is an artist and writer who works alternately Seven framed watercolours between Paris, New York and Toronto. He initially came to attention in Dimensions variable 2003 for his drawings and paintings of young men that systematically Courtesy of the artist re-imagined found erotic photographs along nineteenth century aesthetic modes. In recent years, the artist’s interests in transience, The atmospheric selection of watercolours on display, soaked in cloudy soft desire, cataloging, notation and repeat observation has expanded shades of pale pink rose, lilac, purple, blue and gray, some tinged with bright to include evocative landscapes and their abstraction. His practice strokes of yellow and green, were painted during Paul P.’s time as an artist-in- has also extended to plein air drawing of sculptures within museums, residence on Fogo Island in the summer of 2016. He was based at the three- and to the production of his own sculptural works in the form of storey Tower Studio, which dramatically twists upward on a stretch of rocky furniture. Paul P’s work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, coastline by Shoal Bay. Inspired by the landscapes that he encountered, P. as well as in group exhibitions at MoMA, New York, and the Freud was able to respond directly to the environment and make work in real-time, Museum, London, and is in the collection of MoMA; LACMA, Los reacting as he witnessed the world changing before his eyes. Angeles; the Brooklyn Museum; SFMoMA, San Francisco; and the Whitney Museum, New York, among others. Selected solo exhibitions Looking to the transient and the recurrent, Paul P.’s fascination is often include The Rex Prisms (2016), Maureen Paley, London; Civilization drawn to that which is almost lost, and what beauty can be gleaned. Coordinates (2015), Scrap Metal Gallery, Toronto, and The Homosexual Deeply engaged in confronting the triumphs and tragedies of community- Lovers Throughout the Ages Party (2014), Broadway 1602, New York. altering moments, in past works he has poignantly approached particular periods of time—such as the post-gay liberation movement and pre- AIDS crisis, or the epoch of between WW I&II. Whether channelled by distinctive imagery, or brought forth by his sculpture that finds form or Watching from my perch in Tower studio often my paints failed to keep takes shape, as furniture, or woven textiles, Paul P.’s practice repeatedly up with the subtle velocity of my aqueous surrounding. Eventually I raises connections between the human body and its surroundings, downed my brushes and wrote: “The sky had been a broad king’s blue and thus can be taken to manifest contemplation on art and life. spread upwards from low white clouds. When I looked next it was a silver grey, growing darker. A luminous razor line lay where the sky met the As with his skillful paper-works and oil paintings, his watercolours resonate steel sea, and the sun, shrouded under grey was as dim and simple to with emotion. P.’s stunning imagery often holds the capacity to take one’s look at as white painted light bulb which, suddenly rising like an actor breath away. He artfully succeeds in balancing a great deal of seemingly behind a scrim, left the scene. opposing elements, combining a sense of coherence and at the same time abstraction, creating a remarkable tension between the familiar Paul P. and the creation of something quite unique and original. Awash with a strikingly simultaneous sense of movement and stillness, the graceful brushstrokes of his watercolours have an almost calligraphic air, recalling the delicate precision and mastery of Chinese calligraphy. Subtle, muted yet radiant compositions of the seascape, horizon, and majesty of the icebergs, capture the essence of a place and the many “places” it can be. JOSEPH DEL PESCO

All for the Want of a Whisper, 2017 Joseph del Pesco is a curator, writer and publisher. Since 2009 he has Poster been Director, and in 2016 became International Director of KADIST Courtesy of the artist (Paris and San Francisco). At KADIST del Pesco established a fast-paced program of weekly events that position art as a vehicle for discussion Joseph del Pesco’s contribution to Belonging to a Place is a poster about social and political issues internationally, and started the first made for viewers to take away. With its poetic, insightful text the poster residency for international art magazines. Previously he was adjunct ofers a far stronger message to take home and keep than the material curator at Artists Space, New York. As an independent curator he gesture extended by the artist. Its physical manifestation, carefully has organized exhibitions, projects and publications at The Berkeley considered typeface and overall graphic design can be viewed as a Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; The San Francisco Museum of gift to cherish and share, to tack to your wall or post in the street. Modern Art; Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia; CCA Wattis Institute Del Pesco’s work adapts an old proverb, “For Want of a Nail,” that for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; The Banf Centre; Articule, has been retold and rewritten repeatedly since first appearing in the Montreal; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and the UC thirteenth century, but with the central allegory remaining the same: Davis Museum among others. In 2015-16 he was in residence at SOMA that small, seemingly insignificant acts or omissions may lead to grave in Mexico City, Beta-Local in Puerto Rico, The Luminary in St. Louis and consequences. Del Pesco found a version of the text in Benjamin Franklin’s ArtPort in Tel Aviv. His recent short stories about speculative museums Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732-58), published in Philadelphia, close to have appeared in Art21 Magazine and White Fungus magazine. Previously, where del Pesco was born. One of the founding fathers of the United he has contributed writing to the catalogue for SFMOMA’s exhibition Six States, Franklin viewed the almanac as a way to reach common folk unable Lines of Flight, as well as Manifesta Journal, X-Tra, NERO, Fillip, and SFAQ. to aford books: “a literature for the masses.” Del Pesco’s contemporary rewrite raises a multiplicity of issues concerning histories, traditions, communities and nationalisms that point to geopolitical, sociological and For want of a whisper environmental concerns related to individuals and humanity as a whole. the secret was lost, for want of a secret Realised during his 2017 residency with Fogo Island Arts, All for the Want the mystery was lost, of a Whisper shows a colour gradation of greys chosen to match the skies for want of a mystery of Fogo Island. Holding a Pantone swatch book up to the sky, del Pesco the story was lost, accounted for seven colours that captured the variations of fog and cloud. for want of a story The inclusion of seven shades seems a fitting reference to the proclaimed the culture was lost, “seven seasons” of Fogo Island, as is the reference to an island in the text. for want of a culture The poster typeface is a slight variation on one designed in Toronto by the island was lost, Rod McDonald, Canada’s unoficial “typographer laureate.” McDonald’s for want of an island Laurentian design is based on two historic models, drawing from the the civilization was lost, work of French type designer Claude Garamond (1510–1561), and that for want of a civilization of the English printer and type founder, William Caslon (1692–1766). the earth was lost. Through text, colour and typeface, the poster thus draws together three places of significance to its author. All for the Want of a Whisper, 2017 JEROEN DE RIJKE / WILLEM DE ROOIJ

Voor Bas Oudt, 1996 Jeroen de Rijke (1970-2006, Brouwershaven, Netherlands) and 16mm film, colour, 1 min. Willem de Rooij (1969 Beverwijk, Netherlands) both studied at the Courtesy of Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin/New York Gerrit Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam from 1990-95 and then the Rijksakademie from 1997-98. They began collaborating on the A vibrant green fills the square of the screen. Voor Bas Oudt begins with a realization of video installations, performances, TV programs and saturated close-up. It soon becomes apparent that the intense colour and 16mm short films. They chose their medium as a way of inciting the intricate, abstract lines that fan outward at an angle are the geometrically viewer to watch images that would otherwise be processed in structured leaves of a palm frond. The camera pulls back slowly across the blink of an eye with more intensity. Their static camera work, the spiked yet smooth surface, bringing the structure and materiality of combined with an eficient use of the inherent qualities of time the brightly coloured tropical plant to the fore in front of a velvety-black and light within the filmic medium, gives their subjects, taken from background. The extreme depth of field and clarity of the image are due religion, history and geology, an almost meditative quality. to the use of a borescope lens, which possesses extreme magnification powers and is usually employed for scientific purposes. Layers of space Willem de Rooij has been a tutor at De Ateliers in Amsterdam since are regulated by the camera and reproduced without distortion. As 2002 and professor of Fine Arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt such, every element within the camera’s field of vision is registered am Main since 2006. De Rooij lives and works in Berlin. Recent with equal precision; surfaces and minute details are in sharp focus. solo exhibitions include Ebb Rains (2017), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Willem de Rooij: Entitled (2016), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Towards the end of this short sequence, a white butterfly comes Frankfurt; and Legal Noses (2015), Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Among into view, resting lightly on the leaf. The camera captures how it other institutions, his works can be found in the collections of the flutters its wings and trembles delicately. The fragility of the insect Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof and Museum für Gegenwart, strikes the viewer as much as the bold network of black lines that Berlin; MUMOK, Vienna; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. comprise its patterned wings. The butterfly quivers for an instant before bringing its wings together softly, and the film cuts abruptly to black. The gaze on the butterfly lasts only as a fleeting glimpse. For me, a successful work is one that can function as a question mark and Voor Bas Oudt reworks the vanitas genre of Northern European still- that can remain a question mark for as long as possible… life painting, prominent in the 16th and 17th centuries in Flanders and Willem de Rooij, “Exposition Imaginaire Talk: Willem de Rooij with the Netherlands. The genre typically makes allusion to death, the Vanessa Joan Müller,” Kunsthalle Wien (2017) impermanence of things and the transience of life. Compositions may feature such elements as skulls, watches, musical instruments, fruit, flowers or butterflies to point to the brevity of life and the passage of time. The sense of prolonged time—whereby the classic time-space continuum is slowed to almost a standstill, as well as a sense of reduction—whereby the angle, edit and camera movement are brought to a minimum, are both constants in the films of de Rijke and de Rooij. Voor Bas Oudt plays on this motif in both form and content: the momentary sight of the butterfly powerfully mediates the passing of time and the archival yet temporary nature of the medium itself. The sudden end of the film follows the topos of time in filmic logic, transporting the viewer to another place, and celebrating a concentrated type of perception that is far removed from our contemporary situation of fast-paced image consumption. LEANDER SCHÖNWEGER

Mirror, 2015 of an area of total freedom in art, however this is not necessarily seen as a Sculpture disadvantage. Both physically and atmospherically, Mirror points to a form 47 x 30 x 180 cm of determinism within society, one that is very much at odds with Western Courtesy the artist and Fogo Island Arts culture’s focus on the individual as fully in control of her or his future; a determinism that we often appear all too readily to shy away from. Leander Schönweger’s Mirror is a haunting and uncanny work. A male, hooded figure stands motionless, feet planted shoulder-width apart Leander Schönweger constructs scenarios that tell no story, but create and arms crossed. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that atmospheres with their own open, dreamlike logic. His installations this figure is not a real person, but a ghostly resemblance of one. seek to address the symbolic meanings of objects and situations on an individual subconscious level. At once familiar and foreign, There is no physical human embodying the hooded sweatshirt, his works evoke a sense of alienation as much as déjà-vu, triggering jeans and running shoes, yet the trace of a human presence is associations based on a viewer’s personal memories and the larger palpable, evident by the shape and size of the figure, which matches cultural matrix. Schönweger studied sculpture and multimedia at Schönweger’s physique exactly, and by the clothing it dons, all the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Bergen Academy of Art worn by the artist during his 2015 residency with FIA. In addition, a and Design, and is currently attending a post-academic course at soft current of air emanates from the void where the figure’s face the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Ghent. Recent exhibitions include would be, breathing life from within the body of the sculpture. Elementene (2017), Telemark Kunstsenter, Skien, Norway; paraflows. Schönweger’s sculpture was conceived for Mirror (2015-16), a XI – IDENTITY (2016), Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna; Als wir wieder site-specific installation presented as part of FIA’s emerging hineingingen schein alles ganz normal, so wie immer (2016), Galerie exhibition series that transformed the Fogo Island Gallery into a Nathalie Halgand, Vienna; …recht hat er. (2016), Galerie Prisma, maze comprised of found materials and sculptural objects. Bozen, Italy; Carte Blanche (2016), Pferd, Vienna; Mirror (2015), Fogo Island Gallery, Newfoundland; Parallel Vienna (2015), Alte Post, As in many of Schönweger’s works, Mirror challenges the visitor to Dominikanerbastei, Vienna; Psychogramm (2015), Zur Alten Traube, gaze into the personal abyss within each of us; to examine areas St. Ulrich, Italy; Destination Wien (2015) and The Fog Disperses (2014), scarcely addressed by the surface rationality of society and cultural Kunsthalle Wien. He is the recipient of the Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2014. mainstream. The maze did not expound a narrative per se, but sought to convey an atmosphere of estrangement, impotence and subjection, independent of one’s will, to the forces that pervade To the question of whether art is free, I´d say: no. Just like nothing and human life. As one finds a path through the maze, the structure nobody is in any way free. Everyone and everything is determined by inevitably manifests and asserts its power, leading the visitor astray and circumstances—and further determined by the entities with which without assistance from a guiding thread. The installation becomes they’re confronted. a metaphor for confronting a challenging situation as well as for our passage through life, something we face solely by ourselves. Leander Schönweger, “Interview: Leander Schönweger with Another sculptural feature of the installation was a tall, human-sized Nicolaus Schafhausen” in Leander Schönweger: Die Nebel crate, drawing connotations with a cofin, and ultimately of death. lichten sich (2014)

The loss of control encouraged by the maze and its hooded figure is magnified by the presence of wind, a prevalent element on Fogo Island, evoked in the “breath” of the sculpture. Mirror can be seen as questioning the freedom within everyday life, and the extent to which movement or change is possible. Schönweger is likewise sceptical about the possibility AUGUSTAS SERAPINAS

Four Sheds, 2017 Acting as a metaphor for the cultural heritage of Fogo Island - as much Reclaimed wood, nails and wallpaper ingrained in the weathered wood, layers of peeling paint and notched 12.7 x 3.4 x 9.5 ft surfaces as it is imbued in the social fabric of the community of the Courtesy the artist, Fogo Island Arts and Emalin Gallery island - the installation can be viewed as simultaneously signifying traditions of the past, pointing to the enterprise of the present, and Four Sheds is no ordinary shed or cabin. Augustas Serapinas’ installation positing new perspectives on adaptive frameworks for the future. transforms an existing structure from its modest original function and shape. Installed as an art object within an exhibition space, the shed is Augustas Serapinas was born in 1990 in Vilnius. He received his BA from reconceptualized as a material monument of the people and the history the Vilnius Academy of Art in 2013. As part of an ongoing project called of the place from which it harks. Secret Places, he creates site-specific installations that are indiscernible from their surroundings, building secret studios in ventilation shafts and As with all of Serapinas’ work, the piece came into being by following other hard-to-access spaces for the purposes of reading, discussion, a specific, open artistic process that involves an engagement with the thinking and writing. In 2014 he received the “Best Artistic Debut of environment, an empathetic collaboration with and representation the Year” Prize awarded by the Culture Ministry of Lithuania. Recent of figures from these surroundings, and a sensitive consideration of exhibitions include How To Live Together, curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen, the overriding context that resolutely afects his ideas and resultant Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; QUIET, curated by Samuel Leuenberger, realizations. Overlooked objects, hidden or ordinary spaces, and Barbara Seiler, Zurich, Switzerland; 20th Anniversary Exhibition, with conversations serve as departure points for the seemingly simple yet Simon Martin and Bridget Smith, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, United profound and playful creations that define his practice. Kingdom; Four Sheds, Fogo Island Gallery, Newfoundland, Canada; The original materials of Four Sheds came from an existing shed located on Housewarming, Emalin, London, United Kingdom; Dusting the Grounds, Barr’d Islands, Fogo Island, that was destined to be demolished. Serapinas DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation), London, United Kingdom; Terra dismantled and reassembled the structure with the help of three members incognita: Familiar Infinity, KUMU Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, Estonia; of the community, learning from local knowledge that it was, in fact, the How to gather? (6th Moscow Biennial); Phillip, Lukas & Isidora, SALTS, third iteration of such a configuration. Small-scale, peak-roofed cabins Basel, Switzerland; The Future of Memory, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, are a familiar sight across Fogo Island and Newfoundland, related to the Austria; Don’t You Know Who I Am? Art after Identity Politics, Museum of region’s fishing heritage and commonly used for used for storing firewood, Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium; and Unanswered Q, Contemporary tools and fishing nets, for gutting and cleaning fish, or repairing boats. Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania. Serapinas lives and works in Vilnius.

The quintessential elements of these sheds - wooden boards, nails and shingles - often acquire additional features over time, with recycled My main inspiration comes from life itself. materials added and adjustments made. The reconfiguration and reuse of materials in the Barr’d Islands shed, including vinyl siding, wallpaper- Augustas Serapinas, “Interview: Augustas Serapinas covered panels, and a discarded front door, portray sustainable practices with Nicolaus Schafhausen,” Kunsthalle Wien Blog (2017) as well as economic resourcefulness.

Four Sheds was first presented at the Fogo Island Gallery in 2017 as part of the FIA’s emerging exhibition series. With this second reconfiguration of Serapinas’ site-specific installation, Four Sheds takes on another life. Converted into a shipping crate and sent over water and land to Toronto, the work is rebuilt once again in an act of preservation, appropriation, and adjustment. Four Sheds is afirmative of change and of evolving structures. ZIN TAYLOR

Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots, 2013 Wearing grey and white pyjamas that were made by local seamstress Video projection, 6 framed photographs Mona Brown, the performers (artist Patrick Staf and curator Robin Courtesy the artist and Fogo Island Arts Simpson) are cast into the landscape as stripes and dots, at the will of the lichen. The black and white photographs Taylor took of the pair, Zin Taylor’s works, at once strong stylistic statements and symbolic posing atop the lichen-clad rocks, make reference to Henri Cartier- signs, arrive at places of unknown intrigue. Part storyteller, translator Bresson’s series of photographs of Balinese dancers taken in the 1940s. and archaeologist, he unearths cultural references from diferent The parallel with these ethnographic documents, and ethnography eras, places and people, merging these into his own evolving itself as an observational approach to study other cultures, aligns artistic language. His work is imbued with a philosophical character, with Taylor’s situation as a temporary resident of a new place, and abound with historical and theoretical references, as well as oblique the need to grasp the immediate surroundings in diferent ways. speculations. Concise and yet open-ended, his oeuvre constructs Strange and playful, Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots, like much of meanings and also contemplates on how such meanings are made. Taylor’s oeuvre, does not lead to strict explanations but encourages Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots is a video and series of photographs an active, almost hallucinatory journey of imagination and growth. that, among other things, tell the tale of lichen. They are an eccentric Zin Taylor (1978, Calgary) lives and works in Paris. His work revisits the and reflective formulation of ideas and moments that fit into a process, construction and inscription of form through specific cultural larger conceptual framework: his on-going project The Story of histories. With an expansive and philosophical approach to art making, Stripes and Dots, which takes form through a series of “chapters” Taylor employs familiar visual cues to probe the malleable and mysterious that project narrative explorations in abstraction and figuration. divisions between concept and material. He asks how objects might Taylor translates stripes and dots into “things,” or specific forms and translate thought and how ideas can find tangible articulation in form, images, with an expansive range of material: his video, photography, engaging a process where thoughts about a subject are translated into collage, drawing, installation and sculpture comprise a formal, visual forms about a subject, where abstraction and phenomenology participate and sonic language that engages with his imagination, as well as ours. as tools in a narrative development of form. Taylor has staged solo His visual grammar has a decidedly sculptural line of inquiry, where exhibitions throughout Europe and North America at institutions such as forms and images are bound to the “story” of an interconnected Westfalischer Kunstverein, Münster; Portikus, Frankfurt; Witte de With, language, as much as they are at the same time abstracted from it. Rotterdam; Kunsthalle Wien; Kunsthal Charlottenburg, Copenhagen; The Artist Institute, New York; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots was produced for Taylor’s solo and MuKHA, Antwerp. He is represented by Supportico Lopez, Berlin. exhibition at the Fogo Island Gallery in 2013. During the first of his two-part residency, he began to photograph lichen and research the ancient, multi-levelled organism, whose capacity to adapt and They are cradled by my bodies. I have many of these places to change with the environment fascinated him. Lichens can be seen to inhabit. They make up a field of ground where I spread my surface. incorporate observations of their environment over a vast period of My surface is the voice not given to physical speech. Contact time and record them into their visible surface forms. The lichens in with me gives direction to your form. That’s why I need these two. the film correspondingly come alive in a variety of ways; through the Together we work out well. They lend form to my thoughts. monologue of the voiceover, the appearance of blinking eyes on the rocks, through grinning mouths, or through bodies communicating their Excerpt of voiceover from Lichen Voices / Stripes and Dots (2013) thoughts, “making physical something” that they, as surfaces, “cannot do.” The work has, at times, a rather humorous and absurdist tone. Taylor has described the video as a labour of love that came about through collaboration with many people on Fogo Island to realize the final work. Belonging to a Place: An Exhibition by Fogo Island Arts is a collaboration Scrap Metal Gallery between Art en Valise, Fogo Island Arts and Scrap Metal. Scrap Metal is founded by Samara Walbohm and Joe Shlesinger, two avid art and book collectors who decided to put their passions on exhibit. This privately Art en Valise funded organization is committed to presenting bold, critical and poetic Art en Valise is dedicated to introducing Canadian audiences to new contemporary art works through a carefully curated exhibition program. ideas in the contemporary visual arts. We believe in taking risks and being experimental. Our approach is non-traditional, we are not dealers or curators Founders but art lovers who believe in the value of great art and want to showcase Samara Walbohm and share it with other art lovers. Having no fixed exhibition space allows us Joe Shlesinger to collaborate freely and be dynamic and flexible in our programming. Staf Founders Rui Mateus Amaral, Artistic Director and Curator Liza Mauer Steven Andrews, Head of Installation Paul Marks Elisa Nuyten Fogo Island Arts Highway 334 – Suite 100 Fogo Island Arts PO Box 70 – JBS Fogo Island Arts is a residency-based contemporary art venue that supports Fogo Island, NL research and production of new work for artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians, A0G 2X0 curators, designers and thinkers from around the world. Since 2008, FIA has Canada brought some of the most exciting emerging and renowned artists of today to Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada to take part in residencies and to present fogoislandarts.ca solo exhibitions at the Fogo Island Gallery. Combining contemporary art, iconic shorefast.ca architecture and social innovation in a singular setting, FIA is a world-class Scrap Metal Gallery institution that is uniquely rooted in community. FIA is an initiative of the Shorefast 11 Dublin St, Unit E Foundation, a registered charity dedicated to improving the social, cultural and Toronto, ON M6H 1J4 economic conditions on Fogo Island and other small places around the world. Canada Advisory Board scrapmetalgallery.com Zita Cobb Eleanor Dawson Art en Valise Paul Dean Fabrizio Gallanti artenvalise.com Elisa Nuyten Silke Otto-Knapp Todd Saunders Nicolaus Schafhausen Kitty Scott Monika Szewczyk

Staf Nicolaus Schafhausen, Strategic Director, Fogo Island Arts / Shorefast Foundation Alexandra McIntosh, Director of Programs and Exhibitions Iris Stünzi, Residency Program Coordinator Cyril Lynch, Residency Program Technician COLOPHON

Exhibition

Curator Nicolaus Schafhausen

Exhibition Management Alexandra McIntosh Rui Mateus Amaral

Shipping & Artists’ Travel Iris Stünzi

Press and Communications Alexandra McIntosh Rui Mateus Amaral

Fundraising & Sponsorship Fogo Island Arts graciously acknowledges its Patrons, including members of the Founders’ Circle, Partners and Friends for their essential support of residencies, programs and exhibitions.

Like all not-for-profits, Fogo Island Arts depends on diverse funding sources to sustain its activities. Join FIA Patrons Program and help build Fogo Island Arts in to the future.

Fogo Island Arts is grateful to Air Canada for supporting artists’ travel to the exhibition and public programs as well as the opening event.

Exhibition Installation Steven Andrews Garth Johnson Danielle Greer

Exhibition Booklet

Publisher Nicolaus Schafhausen and Alexandra McIntosh for Fogo Island Arts

Editors Nicolaus Schafhausen Alexandra McIntosh

Graphic Design Alexander Ferko

Text Eleanor Taylor Alexandra McIntosh Nicolaus Schafhausen

Printing & Binding Mimic Print, Toronto