Digital catalog A4

Students of IESA arts&culture and LAGE EGAL present

EPHEMERAL UTOPIA International Contemporary Art Show

Featuring Andrea Ziegler . Anna M. Szaflarski . Constanza Mendoza Emilio Chapela . Marco Montiel-Soto . Soufia Erfanian & Tirdad Hashemi

On View:

June 9 - June 12, 2023

IESA arts&culture & LAGE EGAL at

COPYRIGHTberlin Schwedenstraße 16 13357 Berlin

Description

Concept

Curated by IESA arts&culture and LAGE EGAL, Ephemeral Utopia offers a temporary space that promotes inclusivity and celebrates diversity.This group exhibition with international artists based in Berlin plays with the ambiguity of identity in contemporary society by showing how identity can’t be separated from the social, political, gender or historical problems that people face in everyday life.

The context of Berlin, a globalized city where artists come with their own cultures and beliefs appeared as an ideal backdrop for this project.

This exhibition highlights a selection of works using different media; painting, textile, video and sculpture, ceramic and installation.

An artist's journey is often shaped by what they have encountered in their past experiences and social environment. In the same way, the influence of political and social concerns on art have been shown by sociologists through the last decades. Nevertheless, art cannot only be determined by its context of creation, as formalists have sought to prove the independence of the artist’s mind and its formal expression.

Lilli Donohue, Rhea Eunjoo Inn, Htet Myo Htut Aung, Sylvie Jacob, Tian Liang, Eléonore Scarvelis, Mahsan Shams, Nishat Sultan Khan, Han Yang.

The exhibition plays with the ambiguity of identity in contemporary society: identity can’t be separated from the social, political, gender, historical problems that we face constantly. An artist's journey is often shaped by what they have encountered in their past experiences and social environment. In the same way, the influence of political and social concerns on art have been shown by sociologists through the last decades. Nevertheless, art cannot only be determined by its context of creation, as formalists have sought to prove the independence of the artist’s mind and its formal expression.

Regardless of culture and environment, people embody individuality and have the avenue to express original thoughts, especially through art and literature. For the past few years, exhibitions have shown a tendency to select one of these two themes: showing artists as products of society or conversely, free spirits.

Ephemeral Utopia intends to reveal the duality of identity in its application in art; identity is individualistic freedom, as well as a predetermined social construction.

Constanza Mendoza b. Chuquicamata , Chile 1971

Andrea Ziegler is a textile artist living in Hamburg. With thread and a sewing machine she creates contrasting and whimsical works of art on fabric . In her artistic work, Andrea Ziegler devotes herself to a virulent topic of our time: the concept of home. What does home mean today? Who is part, who is not? What creates a sense of home? In order to approach these questions, she goes to unknown places in the periphery, observes and interviews the people living there, and enters into conversation with them. For a certain period of time she becomes part of the respective community. She then transfers her personal impressions and observations into artistic works.

She "draws" embroidery images with the machine on different fabrics, sometimes colored, sometimes transparent.

Constanza Mendoza is a multidisciplinary artist living in Berlin . Mendoza’s initial disciplines of sculpture and photography are still essential tools within her process.

Her recent works deal with economies of the desires (The Displacement), politics of perception (Dance of Paradoxes), multiplicity and animism (The Monkey Woman), exile and memory (Alma Project), as well architectures of necropolitics (Unterstadt). Mendoza has exhibited extensively in Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga, San Sebastián, Margareth Harvey Gallery, London, Kunst im Untergrund NGBK, Berlin (2008), Instituto Cervantes Berlin (2012), Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2009)

https://www.andreaziegler.net/ Anna M.Szaflarski b. St. Catharines, Canada, 1984.

Anna M. Szaflarski is a writer, artist and artist-book publisher living in Berlin. In her works, she explores the intersections of art , culture and politics , particularly in relation to issues of identity , migration and borders .

She often addresses the ways in which borders and boundaries shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us and how we can navigate and challenge these boundaries to create more inclusive societies . Solo exhibitions include Between Swimming and Dryland presented

by Kunstverein Reutlingen. http://www.annaszaflarski.com/

https://conniemendoza.de/

Emilio Chapela ​b. Mexico City, Mexico, 1978.0 Emilio Chapela is a visual artist living in Berlin with a PhD in Artistic Research from the University of Plymouth. He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, México. His art practice explores intricate connections between science, technology, and ecology. He inquiries on notions of time and space that are manifested through matter and forces such as astronomical phenomena, light, weather, gravity, rocks, plants, volcanoes, and rivers. He enjoys writing, walking, hiking, and stargazing, which are tools that he utilizes for his art practice. He works in different media such as moving images, sculpture, painting and installation. His work has been shown widely in museum and gallery exhibitions in Mexico and abroad. http://www.emiliochapela.com/

Participating Artists

Andrea Ziegler ​b. Germany, 1983.

Participating Artists

Marco Montiel-Soto b. Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1976.

Marco Montiel-Soto, traveler and immigrant, constantly finds himself returning forward. During these expeditions, the route becomes imaginary and travel time elastic. His work and installations are a creolization of architectural structures, collected found objects, sounds compositions, videos, photographs, drawings, collages, texts and maps. His work explores the intersections between political and poetic territories, homeland, traditions, economy, archaeology, religion, myths, death, cosmos and chaos.

Solo exhibitions include Flowing down the river, Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin (2021). https://marcomontielsoto.com/

Tirdad Hashemi and Soufia Erfanian b. Tehran, Iran, 1991. b. Mashhad, Iran 1990.

Tirdad Hashemi lives and works between Paris, Tehran and Berlin. Whether on paper or canvas, often in small formats and depending on the means at hand, people agitate, congregate and break out.

Hashemi will never feel free from her home country, Iran, but somehow, she will remain a foreigner, a stranger wherever she goes. Art is her only necessity, her true home. The only place she can express fully.

Faced with the ups and downs of history, even safe spaces risk being transforming in prisons. Hashemi weaves solitude and intimacy , survival and fragility .

Soufia Erfanian is a Berlin based visual artist. Her artistic practice as well as her conviction in life is to relentlessly strive towards human connection. For as long as she recalls, art has served as a survival tool. It has allowed her to dream and to exist beyond the boundaries of time, place, social pressure and reality in all its complexity. Her artistic practice as well as her conviction in life is to relentlessly strive towards human connection. She has discovered the best way she can fully sympathize and communicate her sentiments with people, is to paint their stories, suffering, joy, what matters to them and what keeps them up at night. In 2021 she was one of the artists part of the residency program, together with Tirdad Hashemi. https://gbagency.fr/fr/artistes/tirdadhashemi

Andrea Ziegler HH/BY/CZ 2022 145 x 150 cm Free machine embroidery and appliqué on transparent Organza

HH/BY/CZ This work is another subjective cartography of mine. It depicts my environment in 2021/22. The colors and also size of the places represent the relevance of the places for me exactly at the time of the production. Top left is Hamburg and parts of northern germany, center right is northeast Bavaria/Czech Republic. These places are zoomed in because they were most important at the time. Other places like Berlin in the Center are smaller, because not relevant at the time. In the meantime the map would look different again. So this always maps a short time, similar to a diary entry, a kind of "fingerprint" of a person at a certain time.

Andrea Ziegler

Otto I 2020 48 x 31 cm Free machine embroidery on black cotton

Otto I Free machine embroidery on black cotton Otto I is part of the series "Auf der Grenze“ (On the Border) where I examined myself in some kind collected places, a kind of "home - mixture“, which show that there is not a singular, but an increasingly fanned out, divided home - homeland - Heimat-en, for me but also for many people nowadays.

Depicted is an abstraction of the traditional greek costume worn by the King of Greece Otto I. Otto was the son of the Bavarian King Ludwig I and installed as King of Greece.

When he had to abdicate after 30 years and returned, he continued to speak Greek and continued to live his life as in Greece. For me, on the one hand, he represents a bizarre history of domination and colonization, but at the same time, there is something touching about his homesickness and longing for Greece in his late years.

My personal connection is that my aunt lived in Mytilene/Lesvos for over 30 years and I visited her very often, so this place also plays an important role in my ''home-mix''.

At the same time, the island of Lesvos is now generally associated with migration, few people knew the island until a few years ago, it has now become famous due to the EU border policy in a dubious, sad way.

It has two sides, one side is the original colors in red, velvet and gold, the other side blue and white.

Anna M.Szaflarski Rest as if nothing was bothering you 2020 43 x 20 cm Glazed Ceramic

As a little girl I would travel to Poland where I was first exposed to Soviet monuments that stand around or are attached to the brutalist architecture in Warsaw. They typically depict workers, miners and mothers in heroic poses holding tools and dressed in working clothing. Instead of glorifying imperial leaders, Soviet culture sought to elevate anonymous laborers that sacrificed themselves for the state. I was conflicted: I loved their figures--their curves, their fullness--, but came to feel comfortable with the erasure of the individual, the exploitative labor dynamic they propagated.

Part of a series of works, I endow similar bulbous forms with relaxation, physical contact, sexual ambiguity and the ability of speech, allowing them to finally rest.

Through this project, I also began to dismantle the strict cultural and familial expectations that have been passed on to me, giving me personally the permission to rest and self-advocate.

Anna M.Szaflarski Just a little REST 2020 43 x 63x 4,5 cm Plaster

Zakaz Palenie (No Smoking) 2020 70 x 100 cm Watercolour and pencil on paper