living room
Initiated and conceptualised by Karin Iturralde Nurnberg

with works by Dagmar Bosma, Dee Hehewerth, Karin Iturralde Nurnberg, Tirza Kater, Tim Mathijsen and Boyan Montero, and video works by Lauren Fong, Fernanda Laguna & Andrés Politano, Sara Milio, Tawna collective & Sani Montahuano, Adela Nenquimo, and Denisse Santiago de Vega

3 .6.2023 — 3.7.2023
Marwan
Amsterdam, NL

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 to watch a selection of video art.
As part the show, and thinking about the possibilities of a sofa store or a project space becoming a living room, we made 10  copies of Marwan’s key a distributed them within 10 visitors of the show, for them 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 by Tirza Kater 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. 

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, and how the city can close up or open up depending on ones conditions, including emotional connections. The reflections were developed while Dee was reading Good Morning, Midnight. A book that inspired thoughts but also a red velvet curtain hanging in the space, which connects boths the Living Room to the Red Velvet Cinema at the Sofa Store as well as with the hotel room of the main character. Boyan Montero contributed with a colorful paper installation of family portraits and personal poetics and Tim Mathijssen contributed with a sculpture called Bird’s Bird. In the middle of the space we had our own sofa, sculpted in collaboration of Dagmar Bosma and I.  

We had video contributions from Lauren Fong, Fernanda Laguna & Andrés Politano, Sara Milio, Tawna collective & Sani Montahuano, Adela Nenquimo, and Denisse Santiago de Vega. 















This was the room text and narrative: 




This was the digital invitation:




This is the cinema under the sofa store: