Forest Families
5. 9. 2024 – 8. 9. 2024, daily 10–18 h
(9.–13.9. on appointment: tel.:608 708 494)
Opening: 5. 9. 17.00 – 23.23 h
Part of: Prague Art Week 24
‘Forest Families’ is a curatorial project by the online plattform Tired Mass.
Amidst ongoing renegotiations of social relationships, the exhibition ‘Forest Families’ is dedicated to exploring individual and collective experiences. The invited artists engage deeply with questions of self-determination, memory, and social interactions. They examine how personal stories and memories are shaped, transformed, and preserved.
The exhibition addresses self-determination and power struggles in a social and historical context, inviting reflection on the intricate relationships between individuals and their environment. It demonstrates how personal experiences are integrated into broader societal processes and how these interactions open up new perspectives.
At its core is the exploration of the fluid boundaries between past, present, and future. The artists illuminate the challenges and struggles associated with the quest for belonging and resistance. Their works offer new avenues to comprehend the complexity of human experiences and social interactions.
Cihan Çakmak, *1993, is a multimedia artist. In her works she deals with collective trauma, oppression, self-image and emancipation.
From 2021-2023 she was Meisterschülerin of Prof. Tina Bara at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, where she also received a diploma in 2021.
She also studied at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, also at the IADE-Creative University in Lisbon, and did further practicing at the International Center of Photography in New York City.
Cihan Çakmak – My Sister and I (2023)
The portrait series features Çakmak along with her sister, using and simultaneously breaking classical portrait photography to highlight the historical context that has influenced their lives as children of Kurdish immigrants.
The double self-portraits incorporate symbols and gestures, such as the protective stances of boxers and clothing reminiscent of traditional Kurdish attire, but dyed in the blue of Turkish military uniforms worn during the unresolved genocide against the Kurds. Çakmak’s work is about showing, remembering, enlightening, and rewriting. She returns to an uncertain origin, balancing between tradition and emancipation, adaptation and self-realization, tracing the fragile, ambivalent states woven through generations.
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Francis Kussatz (*1996 in Titisee-Neustadt, Black Forest) engages with fragments from the fields of sculpture, performance, photography, video, prose texts, installations, and music. Francis continually reassembles and deconstructs these elements. By creating various personas, Francis questions existing gender constructs and other themes, such as economic freedom and the limitations imposed by illness within systems that only consider certain groups of people.
In 2018, Alexander Klaubert and Francis Kussatz founded the artist collective Observant Thick Conversation (otc) with the aim of establishing a lasting exchange and developing structures that support, promote, and demonstrate new approaches to collective work. Francis studied fine arts at the HfbK Hamburg and the UdK Berlin and is a graduate under Monica Bonvicini.
Francis Kussatz – Jana (2023)
A distinctive feature of Francis Kussatz’s artistic practice is the consistency and care with which Kussatz engages with developed characters, such as the Sick Person or the Young Business Woman without a Business. Kussatz writes poetic texts for each performance or video, constructing characters as part of an ongoing, open-ended fictional novel with occasional autobiographical references. This approach opens spaces where structural, normative, and societal processes are addressed through individual subjects, imbuing the works with significant emotional power. Through the individual, societal contexts and commonalities are revealed, making the seemingly large visible in the seemingly small.
Kussatz’s deep exploration of identity complexities creates a moving play reminiscent of Claude Cahun’s visionary works from 100 years ago. Known for photographic self-portraits, Cahun is often described as a “drag king avant la lettre.” However, Kussatz’s personas in “I Dreamed I Was Someone” focus not only on the relationship between the figures but also on Kussatz’s relationship to them. Kussatz critically examines the power dynamics inherent in “creating characters” from literature or film.
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Julia Lübbecke (*1989 in Giessen) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, UMPRUM – Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. She completed the Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt postgraduate programme in 2020. Lübbecke’s transdisciplinary practice includes sculptural installations, photography, text, video and performative elements. Her works deal with the relationship between body and institution, exploring this connection to examine dominant structures of order and create processes to make them fragile. She is particularly interested in the potential of effects such as desire or discomfort, which are key themes in her subjective archive. She uses this term to describe her own practice of collecting and constructing, which aims to develop an ephemeral method of sharing and remembering knowledge, abandoning classifications and categorizations. Julia Lübbecke’s works have been shown internationally: at Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Santiago de Chile, Galerie im Turm in Berlin, VUNU Gallery in Košice (SK) and IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art in Eupen (BE). She was one of the recipients of the IKOB – Art Prize for feminist art in 2019 and has received grants from the Stiftung Kunstfonds (2021, 2022) and the Berlin Senate (2022), among others. In 2022 her first monograph was published by Sandstein Verlag and she’s currently a Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence. Julia Lübbecke is part of the collective otc – Observant Thick Conversation.
Julia Lübbeckes work “If I had a hammer, I’d smash ______________________(Part II)” (2024) show excerpts of photographs from the book “Woman at Work” by Betty Medsger. For this photo reportage she travelled through the USA in 1974. Back then Medsger told the New York Times that she was motivated by anger and being “very much a feminist”. Tired of the stereotypes regarding the kind of work women can and cannot do, she decided to document what women actually worked as: everything. Julia Lübbecke’s work reflects on this political view. It is embodied through photography and documented in a book that is hardly known today and can only be viewed in feminist archives in Germany. In particular, the work focusses on Medsger’s gaze on gestures as well as the ever-changing perspective for each woman she photographed and, accordingly, the physical closeness. Additionally, the sublimation print on vertical blinds refers to the archive as a space. To this day vertical blinds are part of the basic repertoire of archives as protection from the effects of sunlight. Furthermore, this form opens up questions on visibility in connection to memory and knowledge while reflecting one’s own physical presence in the archive.
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Tim Plamper (*1982, Germany) is a visual artist. He lives and works in Berlin. In his artistic work he deals with mental states – with the doubtful reliability of one’s own existence. In his work, different temporal and symbolic levels are interwoven, forming a complex mental sediment. As curator of the collective Drawing Wow, he is professionally engaged in drawing and networks. He studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and at the University of East London. Since 2021 he has been teaching at the Braunschweig University of Art.
His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad. Among others: Security IV (Event Horizon) (2022), Spazio ORR hosted at Culterim Gallery, Berlin; Exit II (The Beloved Dies) (2021), NOD Gallery, Prague; Security (2019), Eduardo Secci Contemporary, Florence; Exit II (Prologue) (2019), Megamelange, Cologne; Reflection is a Wall (2019), Unttld Contemporary, Vienna; Zone (2017), Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg; Hausbesetzung (2014), Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden.
“We registered the arrival of the material. We moved the cursor over the link1 and activated the download. We saved the material, printed it out (19 pages of A4 paper, black & white) and pinned it on the wall (concrete). We had expected 20 works. For us 20 is the rounder number and the end of a decade. And also the beginning of another. Since we think in grid patterns, we arranged the material in 5 rows of 4 pictures.2 At first glance there are what you could describe as ‘pictures’ provided that you conceive of them as the ‘image’3 of something. But the grid also shows that one picture is missing: Row 3 Picture 4. We baptised the gap K1. We took the dog for a walk around the block and stocked up on shortbread, mineral water and ground roast coffee. While the kettle was boiling the water, we identified 8 of the so-called pictures to be drawings (charcoal on paper) and formed the group ‘drawings’4. For simplicity we called this group ‘Z’. Another group the same size as the ‘Z’ group appeared to us to be photographs. Or digital manipulated originals. Designating them the label ‘P’ seemed obvious. ‘P’ as in ‘photo’ or ‘Photoshop’. Since the third group could, admittedly, be considered drawings, but something larger, more savvy, was emanating from them and they were also numerically distinct from ‘Z’ and ‘P’ – i.e. there were 3 of them – we moved to the other end of the space, if you can talk at all of direction within the alphabet, and found that the umbrella term ‘A’ was adequate. ‘A’ is self-explanatory and because of its prominent position within its frame of reference it genuinely stands out.”
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Alexander Klaubert (*1991) lives and works in Berlin. Since 2022 he is Meisterschüler (postgraduate studies for artists) of Isabel Lewis at HGB – Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. Before he studied Fine Arts at in the classes of Tina Bara, Joachim Blank and Peggy Buth. Alexander Klaubert’s works were already shown among others at Galerie KLEMM’S, ZAK – Centre for Contemporary Art Berlin and Diskurs Festival Gießen. He works in the field of performance, sculpture, video and sound. Thematically he is located in social structures, gender constructs and identity. In 2018 Alexander Klaubert founded together with Francis Kussatz the artists collective ‚otc – Observant Think Conversation‘ (formerly ‚Law of Life – LoL‘). 2020 they founded their experimental performance duo ‚Klaubert & Kussatz‘. 2020 Alexander Klaubert founded the art platform ‚Tired Mass‘.
“untitled” 2024
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Natália Sýkorová is an artist, researcher, performer, and everything she needs and can become. Her work is situated on the premises of conjectures and speculations; notions which she investigates through the study of non-human and technological forms. Working with digital technologies and speculative fiction strategies, she unfolds narratives to illuminate living under distinct ecological conditions. In her work she creates gamified performances, interactive objects and sound outputs. She is interested in creating complex realities, into which she subsequently introduces performance that explore the limits of the human, interconnections of architecture, ecology, magic, and non-human intelligence.
Prototypes for weaning, 2023
installation / wood, stainless steel, rubber
1,5x1x 0,5m
This work examines technological agencies of objects and their inner dependence as
naturecoultures. The main interest is the adaptation of trans-corporeal experience, and in particular the potentialities of individual and collective resistance. Working with digital technologies and speculative fiction strategies, the installation unfolds fictional narratives of survival in a foreign environment to recall the experience of hospital facilities. It seems pseudo-functional towards the human user, that is in this scenario absent. These facilities are treated as myth-making territories, self-programming, self-alienating, de-stabilizing.