Join us on 20 July at 4pm to meet with Jean-Ulrick Désert and Iza Tarasewicz, who are taking part in the exhibition “Butterfly Resistance: Haiti”.
This weekend will be your last chance to visit the exhibition, so join us for some closing discussions. Jean-Ulrick and Iza, along with the curators, will be present between 4pm and 7pm on Saturday.
The event accompanies the exhibition „BUTTERFLY RESISTANCE: HAITI”
Exhibition: 15 May – 21 July 2024
JEAN-ULRICK DÉSERT
Born in 1960 in Pòtoprens, the artist currently resides and works in Berlin, Germany. Within his conceptual, socially engaged artistic practice, he considers both incredibly localised, specific phenomena as well as a world-wide web of globalised processes. These shifting but simultaneously applied perspectives are evident in the work Shrine of the Divine Negress no. 1 which incorporates the figure of Josephine Baker in the place of a Eurocentrically shaped imagining of the Virgin Mary. Surrounding the portrait of the groundbreaking figure of the civil rights movement with butterflies, military medals and a rainbow gradient, Désert further destabilises our reading of religious iconography. The artists choice of materials creates additional layers of meaning. While the vinyl and wood structure lets through light to create the illusion of a stained-glass window in the gallery, it readily gives the ruse away when one approaches.
IZA TARASEWICZ
In her multimedia practice, Tarasewicz draws together a web of interconnected topics which continue to feed from and into each other: individuality versus collectivity; nature and farming; rituals and spirituality; folk dance and its significance in society; and finally, social inequality in the context of the rural versus the urban. The circular shapes formed by Looped Processions II link back to traditional Polish dances such as mazurek or oberek. But the objects dangling below allude to the agricultural environment Tarasewicz is surrounded by on a daily basis since she lives in the countryside. Drawing attention to the human desire to form communities, she holds up village life as a possible model. Far from being naively enraptured by the fantasy of an idyllic countryside, the sharp objects bringing to mind farming tools, in addition to the disarray they introduce, suggest that she is aware of the potential pitfalls of advocating for an indiscriminate return to nature.
