living roomGroup Show
Concept by Karin Iturralde Nurnberg
with works by Dagmar Bosma, Dee Hehewerth, Tirza Kater, Tim Mathijsen, Boyan Montero, Fernanda Laguna, Sara Milio, Tawna Collective, Adela Nenquimo, Denisse Vega de Santiago and me.
2023
project space Marwan
I’ve had this feeling many times. Sometimes. Even. Knowing.
I DO want to buy something.
But if I step into a shop and I’m immediately asked how I can be assisted, a better-get-out-of-this-place-because-I-don’t-know-what-I-want-or-if-I-even-want-something wakes up. It took training to reassure a young employee that they are doing a great job attending me, that I’ll take my time and let them know if they can help me and then allow our two animal bodies to rearrange themselves in space, comfortably forgetting each other.
This show began as a desire to make a film screening in an underground cinema in a sofa store in De Clerqstraat. After the idea was rejected by the store, this fantasy became the starting point for an exhibition at Marwan.
As a part of ‘Living Room’ we invited 6 artists to contribute with a video work that would be added to a Youtube Playlist which we suggested to go watch at the Sofa Store
We also screened the videos every weekend for the people who wanted to watch them and didn’t dare bearing the uncomforable feeling of going into a store and not buying something.
As part of our re-shaping of the private/public space and the spaces in between (like a store or a project space) we also distributed ten copies of Marwan’s key to ten visitors to use the space as a living room situated in the city center. Each keys was attached to a scaffolding joint-piece, a poetic gesture symbolizing the construction of an imaginary movable structure connected by each person carrying a corner piece of it. People with a key are welcome to come meet someone, bring their own snacks, expand Marwan’s opening hours, receive a zoom call, use the toilet, take a nap, or make time between two meetings. The Keychains were done by Tirza Kater.
Other works in the space included rusty, dangle-ly ornamented remote controls each with names of queer movie celebrities by Dagmar Bosma. We also had a folder with a unidirectional e-mail thread with reflections and stories around walking, public space in Amsterdam and Aotearoa by Dee Hehewerth. Boyan Montero contributed with a colorful paper installation of family portraits and personal poetics and Tim Mathijssen contributed with a sculputer called Bird’s Bird. My contribution was the concept of the project, the invitation to explore the Sofa Store, a story in the room text and the sculpting (done in collaboration with Dagmar Bosma) and placement of a sofa in the safe.