margins
hekla dogg jonsdottir
listen to the sirens
space for contemporary art
february 28th - 15th april, 2015
opening: february 28th 2015, 12 am
performance: february 28th 2015, midnight
art viewer
Margins
Hekla Dogg Jonsdottir
curated by Alessandro Castiglioni,
Rita Canarezza & Pier Paolo Coro
Listen to the Sirens - Space for Contemporary Art
Montagu Bastion, Gibraltar - UK
Parallel event:
Stefano Cagol, The Body of Energy
Somewhere, even though we may not know where, there are places where people, but also the natural elements and things, meet. These encounters often take place in central locations, in city squares, under the spotlight of representation or self-representation. In particular conditions, however, these meetings become liminal, they move in lateral and peripheral spaces. Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir is concerned with these places and these encounters.
The Icelandic artist visited Gibraltar for the first time in 2012, for a field trip to discover the territory. Since that time, Hekla has returned insistently with her thoughts to a precise location noted from Europa Point, between the seas of the Strait of Gibraltar, the point where the waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean mingle. Following the evocations of the legendary tales of Jacque-Yves Cousteau, who said that he saw walls of water meeting and colliding with each other in the ocean depths, Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir resignifies that particular point, because for the artist the landscape, the natural elements, acquire a metaphorical and narrative value. A landscape that often is often a residue, abandoned or forgotten. Or, even more often a hybrid form. This landscape is that of Margins, that threshold where two worlds touch.
It is on this idea of the margin and this hybrid territory that the exhibition builds, with the central work being a superimposed reprise of that precise point where the waters of the sea, different by currents and temperature, mingle. The artist then enriches this image by consulting a conceptual map, dense with references: here we find the boundary that separates Gibraltar from La Linea de la Concepcion (another name of a margin, by the way), the transition between different months (the exhibition opens on February 28, the day that once every four years is prolonged to arrive at 29) but also between years (in antiquity February was the last month of the year) and between days (a small performance will be held on the night of the inauguration between 28 February and 1 March 2015).
Like the Third Landscape by Gilles Clements and reversing non-places by Marc Augé, Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir gives meaning to what remains, transforming a place of dereliction or stereotype into the possibility of building a meaning.
Then, as the artist recalls, at these points some things may happen, or nothing may happen.
promoted by
Ministry of Culture of the Government of Gibraltar
Listen To the Sirens - Space for contemporary Art
Montagu Bastion
Gibraltar (UK)
www.listentothesirens.org
hekla dogg jonsdottir
listen to the sirens
space for contemporary art
february 28th - 15th april, 2015
opening: february 28th 2015, 12 am
performance: february 28th 2015, midnight
art viewer
Margins
Hekla Dogg Jonsdottir
curated by Alessandro Castiglioni,
Rita Canarezza & Pier Paolo Coro
Listen to the Sirens - Space for Contemporary Art
Montagu Bastion, Gibraltar - UK
Parallel event:
Stefano Cagol, The Body of Energy
Somewhere, even though we may not know where, there are places where people, but also the natural elements and things, meet. These encounters often take place in central locations, in city squares, under the spotlight of representation or self-representation. In particular conditions, however, these meetings become liminal, they move in lateral and peripheral spaces. Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir is concerned with these places and these encounters.
The Icelandic artist visited Gibraltar for the first time in 2012, for a field trip to discover the territory. Since that time, Hekla has returned insistently with her thoughts to a precise location noted from Europa Point, between the seas of the Strait of Gibraltar, the point where the waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean mingle. Following the evocations of the legendary tales of Jacque-Yves Cousteau, who said that he saw walls of water meeting and colliding with each other in the ocean depths, Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir resignifies that particular point, because for the artist the landscape, the natural elements, acquire a metaphorical and narrative value. A landscape that often is often a residue, abandoned or forgotten. Or, even more often a hybrid form. This landscape is that of Margins, that threshold where two worlds touch.
It is on this idea of the margin and this hybrid territory that the exhibition builds, with the central work being a superimposed reprise of that precise point where the waters of the sea, different by currents and temperature, mingle. The artist then enriches this image by consulting a conceptual map, dense with references: here we find the boundary that separates Gibraltar from La Linea de la Concepcion (another name of a margin, by the way), the transition between different months (the exhibition opens on February 28, the day that once every four years is prolonged to arrive at 29) but also between years (in antiquity February was the last month of the year) and between days (a small performance will be held on the night of the inauguration between 28 February and 1 March 2015).
Like the Third Landscape by Gilles Clements and reversing non-places by Marc Augé, Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir gives meaning to what remains, transforming a place of dereliction or stereotype into the possibility of building a meaning.
Then, as the artist recalls, at these points some things may happen, or nothing may happen.
promoted by
Ministry of Culture of the Government of Gibraltar
Listen To the Sirens - Space for contemporary Art
Montagu Bastion
Gibraltar (UK)
www.listentothesirens.org