Defiant Bodies is inspired by current developments within Europe and across the globe. The exhibition asks what individual and collective marks violence leaves behind, and how this experience is transformed into protest or alternative ways of finding connections amongst individuals. The exhibition is an invitation to reflect on the effects of power and how the individual and collectives give shape to resistance and healing through the body.
FEB 1th | 16.00 Artist Talk Maja Šmon in conversation with Vera Kersting and Elena Orta
FEB 7th | 19.00 Poetry Reading Vera Kersting
FEB 22nd | 16.00 – 18.00 Finissage Curator Talk, Maja Šmon
The works by movement artist Kulshedra Dervishi, painter Vera Kersting and photographer Elena Orta meditate on resistance as a way to engage with the outside world when it clashes with personal freedom and desires. Vulnerable exposure of the body challenges individual boundaries by merging into collective experience. This fluid nature of revolt and resistance becomes visible in the works of all three artists: Kulshedra Dervishi’s project Rebel Body Vol. I is performance art in which she captures the complex dynamics of systemic violence through movement. Elena Orta’s photographs convey this energy of pushing and pulling, exposing at times a thin line between the urge to physically resist and a retreat into collective shelter. The experience of humiliation and giving in to the outside force, as a protection mechanism becomes apparent in Vera Kersting’s series I had to bow she said. Kersting manages to translate this interplay in her bold paintings by using strong colours and adding a grotesque, humoristic aspect to it.
The exhibition Defiant Bodies, curated by Maja Šmon, is a pilot project for the Young Curators Program (YCP) initiated by Contour Gallery.