STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
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14 FEB to 8 MAR 2020 MUŻA
Auberge d’Italie Merchant Street Valletta
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2020 Printed: Malta 2020 Design: Anna D’Alessandro Editing: Karsten Xuereb All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the owners.
Š Unfinished Art Space - Unfinished Foundation
STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
BARUMBARA COLLECTIVE
performance on 14-15-16 February
Etienne Farrell + Charlene Galea
Curated by Margerita Pulè Exhibition Design by Tom van Malderen Part of Spazju Kreattiv’s Art+Feminism 2020 Project, in collaboration with Wikimedia Community Malta, M3P Foundation, Unfinished Art Space and the Gabriel Caruana Foundation
Roxman Gatt performance on 28-29 February
Letta Shtohryn
14 Feb – 8 Mar 2020
MUŻA, Auberge d’Italie Merchant St, Valletta
Cover image: Etienne Farrell & Charlene Galea
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Strangers in a Strange Land
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It may seem tiresome and even a bit passé to again be confronted with a feminist argument – it’s easy to think that with gender quotas and equal rights, feminism has lost its validity. Sadly though, the message that gender inequality still exists bears repeating; yes, generations of feminists have inched us closer to equal rights, but the world’s default is still very much one rooted in a patriarchal reality. Indeed, it would be over-simplistic to insist upon a male-female binary divide and thus reinforce stereotypes of masculine and feminine behaviour. A fluidity of genders and identities now allows for a greater freedom of
behaviour and opportunities than ever before. However, it would be equally disingenuous to pretend that women are not still experiencing discrimination and micro bigotries on a daily basis – prejudices that even the most enlightened (but automatically privileged) man may not be aware of. Make no mistake; the thousand tiny cuts of chauvinism – the expectations of how women should behave and what men are entitled to - are still very much ingrained in our societies. That is the context for this project; to attempt to unravel some of the gender-based values that exist around us.
Strangers in a Strange Land refers to the hundreds of negotiations that women make as part of their daily lives – often without even being conscious of them – to navigate in a context where the default is almost without exception a male version of the world. This can range from small irritations like air-conditioners being set too cold for women, to more significant inequalities like inbuilt algorithmic prejudices, medical misdiagnoses or a misrepresentation of sexual violence against women. The name of the exhibition refers to a Biblical passage where Moses names his firstborn son
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Gershom, or ‘stranger’ in reference to the Exodus, because he himself had been ‘a stranger in a strange land’. It is also the title of a sciencefiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about a human born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, who comes to Earth in early adulthood. What can we make of these stories? [Apart, of course, from the maleness of their protagonists]. Is it an exaggeration to claim that women are, like Gershom’s name, trapped in a perpetual exodus, never arriving, and never fully at home? Or that they are surrounded by an alien world, raised on Mars, and unable to cope with the cultures and concepts of the planet Earth? Take even the proud sub-title
of the city of Valletta, in which the exhibition takes place; a city ‘built by gentlemen for gentlemen’. If the city is built for gentlemen, what should the women do? Act like gentlemen in order to ‘fit it?’ Or restrict themselves to the edges of the peninsula, so as not to appear out of place. These arguments may seem facetious, but actually they serve as a useful metaphor for women’s perpetual necessary state of ‘clawing back’ their identity, rights and existence from society’s imbalanced status quo. The works in this exhibition are at once personal and political, having been developed through research, and through the personal experiences of the artists themselves. Some
diverge from the feminist standpoint to encompass many other elements of identity, authority and interaction, seeing the grey areas between the male-bad female-good dichotomy. Others are much more direct – militant almost – in their approach; others are based on hard facts and empirical data gathered by the artist. The divergence of work and discipline reflects the balance that we – as women – attempt to strike daily. Walking the streets of a world built by and for gentlemen, we also must negotiate between the personal and the political, as we traverse broad interactions and intimacies alike. Margerita Pulè
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BARUMBARA COLLECTIVE
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Barumbara Collective, Imagined More Than Woman, 2020 Photo credit Mac Kam Photography ©Barumbara Collective
BARUMBARA COLLECTIVE
STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
Performance, coordination Loranne Vella Performance Sephora Gauci Direction Mac Kam Performance, Light design Eleanor Bryce Performance Francesca Saraullo
Imagined more than Woman An immersive performance which defies the limits of self-perception.
Barumbara Collective takes you on an inner journey questioning the boundaries that surround us as identities, an experiment at redefining the contours of a cultural space through a “female gaze�.
Music Danjeli Schembri
The title, from a poem by Aphra Behn, hints at the several questions raised in this work related to gender roles, constructs, and expectations, and the language used to speak about them.
Additional music Damiano Perri
What, then, are the implications of being a woman?
Performance Serena Galante
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Etienne Farrell + Charlene Galea
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Father
Etienne Farrell + Charlene Galea
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Photography, installation, 2020 50cm x 76cm each
JIEN
A tribute to the parasites; snapshots of six bullies. A spotlight on the autocratic, dominating, sneaky, high and mighty. Performance artist Charlene Galea and visual artist Etienne Farrell work together to explore and recreate six arrogant and peremptory characters, whose false sense of strength depends on manipulating and intimidating others. As the work borders with the comic, it aims to artfully hint to the vulnerability of the characters involved, as their power comes not from within themselves, but depends entirely on the reactions of the people they encounter.
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Joan mixed media on canvas, 2019 206 x 104 cm
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I take you Seriously mixed media on canvas, 2019 206 x 104 cm RIDE [Broom Broom] steel, chrome spray-paint finish, 2019 170cm x 60cm Warrior Heart Geart (2) cold cast brass, resin, fabric, 2019 40 x 40 x 20 cm
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Roxman Gatt
My Womxn is a God My God is a Womxn mixed media on canvas, 2019 206cm x 104cm
Roxman Gatt
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Performance Roxman Gatt Sound Roxman Gatt Choreography Roxman Gatt, Sim Gray Moving Image Roxman Gatt, Sim Gray Filming Sunny Dancers Roxman Gatt, Sim Gray, Chyrsso Cosmas, Eleni Papazoglou, Rosalind Wilson
My Womxn is a God my God is a Womxn The intention of the work is to reclaim derogatory words used for women and celebrate their meaning through the means of movement and sound. Six songs have been written for this performance. The choreography is devised to go alongside these songs as well as painting, video and sculptural works. Various clubbing gestures such as ‘windmill’, ‘head banging’, ‘cruising’, ‘moshing’, as well as the witch dance from Metropolis (1927) and the interpretation of the word ‘Slut’ were all referenced for the creation of the piece.
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Letta Shtohryn
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Letta Shtohryn, “woman”, “holding”, detail, 2020
Letta Shtohryn
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“woman”, “holding” Steel, plastic, epoxy, printed image, wax, electronics, tablets, thread, fabric. 2020 190cm x 260cm x 60cm
If the world before 2020 was not built for women, the future – ever-more controlled by algorithmic programmes – will be even less so. Adoption of machine-learning practices at their early stages made them suitable for and usable by one segment of society only; white males with European features. Other groups were not considered, and thus not included in the data sets that trained the algorithms. This work takes as its starting point, commercial facial analyses and imagelabelling services which are ‘trained’ on data sets taken from social media, and explores the consequent bias that comes with those data sets. Thus, women are often described as ‘holding’, implying that the data sets with which the algorithms trained see women as carers. Women looking straight into
the camera as labelled as “sexy”, while a shirtless man posing seductively is labelled as “serious” and “finelooking”. A converse action, testing text-to-image algorithms “woman in front of a mirror” results in a semiabstract blob that can be recognised as a posed selfie in underwear. We may think of algorithms as futuristic, or somehow neutral, but ultimately, they have been created by people who have their own biases and prejudices. So, by default, algorithms have learnt what type of person “looked criminal” and what gender should be attributed to a default doctor, lawyer and scientist. The 2020s seen from the future are a turning point for algorithmic inequality. This is the decade when the untamed gender data gap led to women’s algorithmic invisibility.
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Bettina Hutschek
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Cynethryth As you read this story and wonder about my name, or find it impossible to pronounce, please feel free to simply say “C”. Otherwise, read Cyneðryð. My parents named me after 8th century Cynethryth, of supposedly Frankish origin, who had been set adrift at sea in an open boat for her crimes. What crimes might a woman of the 8th century have committed? Has she gone to bed with her landlord? Given birth to a child before marriage? Told her opinion? Collected healing plants? Either way, landing on the Welsh coast, Cynethryth had been taken to King Offa of Mercia, who fell in love with her, and quickly married her, thus making her Queen of the Mercians. (What a turn of events!) Cynethryth then gave birth to one son and at least four daughters to King Offa. She is also said to have
become influential in the administration of Mercia and ended up being one of the few women to have coins issued in her name in the early medieval west. The imagery employed was that used on coins of late Roman empresses. Now, this applies to 8th century Cynethryth, but not to me. I don’t think I would survive a single day on a boat, set adrift in the ocean. Instead, I float in my headspace, feeling chaos surrounding me. I pace my tiny flat, I drop clothes and items and books left right center, not expecting anybody to pick them up, just leaving them as traces of my presence, to remind myself that I exist. Sometimes I get the urge to change my life, to clean up the mess, to have a blow of fresh air whizzing through my head. To become socially acceptable, or what I deem to be socially acceptable. Then I
Bettina Hutschek
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tidy my rooms, stuff all the dirty laundry in the basket destined for its use, I clear the surfaces and wipe dust. in my early 20s I was very ambitious, outright arrogant, now I just walk the streets in a seemingly ambitious stride, talk about my ideas without ever putting them into practice. Once, about a year ago, I decided to join a Yoga school. In class, I rolled out my mat and observed the clothes of my fellow yogis. They all wore the same apparel - tight leggings, sports bra and some loose sleeveless shirt on top. I stuck out by wearing shorts and an oversized t-Shirt some guy has left in my flat. The next morning my inner thighs were killing me. Walking straight was a struggle. Whenever I bent forward, my back hurt, everything hurt, and I spent the day on the sofa eating chocolate. It took me one month to return to the next class.
I would love to have coins struck in my name, showing my profile in copper or bronze. So I dream away, in my chocolate dreams. Maybe I should start something big, or just anything really, start some random job: take on a position at the secret service, or become barista, or open a club which will become fashionable, or start working as an escort lady. I google websites on how to apply for escort services. The women on the pictures look confidently into the camera and strike poses that make me feel uncomfortable simply looking at them. I struggle with the thought of having pictures taken of me in dessous, and my cup size is not the biggest. During the few days of my period I can almost boost a C cup, but usually it is a standard B. My underwear is practical and pragmatic and it would feel fake or phony if I changed.
I have no problem with high heels, on the contrary, I walk the streets, effortlessly balancing on inches of heels, head up high, without looking at my phone, proud. I try to walk like the empress my name deserves. Sometimes I like to lean on a gentleman‘s arm for support, but just to help me keep up the facade longer. C strides down side streets with the same impetus as if she has just descended from a stage, having been applauded for receiving an award, and walking on a red carpet. She has an inbuilt pride which helps her carry her head high on her elongated neck, elegantly turning it towards the left and right in slow motion. Flowing with the movement of her neck, she waves her imagined long robe around her slender legs. Her heels fly high as a kite.
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My friend Andrea tells me “C, you walk like a true empress.” She knows, and I know, I am just trying to hide my fear.
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Sometimes I call on old Cynethryth for advice. There are days I feel good and there are days I don‘t feel anything at all. In my dreams I often see a small fox crossing a path in front of me. It looks at me as I approach by bike or on foot. The fox usually pops up from the right and crosses over to the left, then turning its head, staring at me like I was shining a strong light at it. Then it turns its head back again and I see the fox tail disappear between trees, fences and dust bins.
I have a collection of cacti whom i talk to. I never really was into dogs or cats or other pets, but my cacti have become my family, when I am away from the flat I miss them the most. My first cactus dates from when i was six. My uncle gave it to me as a birthday present, and it became my friend. Whenever my father would beat me in rage I turned to the cactus, still feeling the pain of the strokes on my skin. Simply looking at the cactus made me feel comforted. The beatings came randomly but regularly, my mother was helpless and did not avoid them. Sometimes they happened because he was in a bad mood, or because I ate too slowly, or dropped my fork too often, anything could be a reason for a beating. If I screamed or shouted they locked me into a cupboard which smelled of old wood. At age 16 I moved out, taking
only a small suitcase of clothes, my diary and my cactus. I arrived in London, moved only twice over the past 24 years, I simply arrived here, plopp, here I am. This is the story of a woman who left home. This is the story of a woman who strides confidently into life. This is the story of a woman who does not think highly of herself. This is the story of a woman who got kicked out of a relationship because she told her partner that she thought his picture frames were ugly. This is the story of a beaten woman. This is the story of a woman with an empress‘ name.
Bettina Hutschek
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This is the story of a woman with a collection of cacti. The second or third month in yoga school, I felt a bit more comfortable, my legs hurt less, and my different outfit was not commented on. The yoga teacher then really got into breath work. Everybody moaned, breathed, in and out. UHHHH, and aaaaah.. and UUHHH and aaaaaah, and oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Ufffff. “Let it all out”, said the teacher. He has no clue, really has no clue. My father was a caring man, but he considered it perfectly normal to slap a waitress on the butt. He used to cook
chicken for me, and make my bed, but he also told me “if you are so strong willed you won’t survive in this world”. He was scared I could do something which he would label “stupid”, and get beaten for doing it. So he beat me up as often as he could in order to avoid future damage and prepare me for the world. He told me he acted out of love. The last time I met him I had just discovered that I had gotten very allergic to pine nuts. “Please make sure there are no pine nuts”. My father deliberately ignored me, or wanted to test my strength by adding some pine nuts into the salad, which caused me to have an anaphylactic episode. When I recovered from my weakness, I rammed my unused epipen into my father’s left shoulder and will never return. I bought a book “How to Live a Feminist Life” which convinced
me to look for other ways to cohabite with men. All the yoga students felt like they were releasing something heavy and big. They were breathing in and out, loudly, exaggeratedly. I twitched on my mat, aggravated by all the moaning. I felt like I had walked into the wrong sect, and I wanted to get up and punch the yoga instructor in the face and say “fuck off, you fucker”, knowing very well that my out-of-place aggression would upset them, but also give them the upper hand. Then everybody would look at me with this pardoning gaze “Look at that poor hag, look at poor little 40+ yoga practitioner who got a mental exhaustion patch, letting out her aggression on the yoga teacher“. I quit the subscription that same month. I started to think that maybe my “will”
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was something i should keep and not get rid of. My astrology adviser told me i was coming out of mercury retrograde shadow which had affected my previous 32 years heavily, and that i was finally ready to go head first into life. This is the story of a woman who got stranded on an island. She taught herself to dive head first into the water, and to crawl and swim butterfly. She got so good at swimming that she participated in world championships of freestyle and long distance swims. Once, during a crossing, she got stung so badly by a swarm of jellyfish that she was brought to emergency. When she had recovered from her burn marks she started dating the emergency doctor and finally was happy.
I wish they had not named me after Cynethryth. It is hard to live a life as woman. As a woman you always get the blame for the crime. You get the blame for wanting to keep the baby, or for wanting to get rid of the baby, no matter what, you are going to be called selfish because the man does not have the power to take the decision. At least I started to do yoga at home now. While being Queen of Mercia, Advisor Aethelbert got murdered in King Offa‘s palace. Legends blame Cynethryth. This is the story of a Queen who had a pit dug in the bedchamber and perched a chair above it. Aethelbert was lured into the chamber by the promise of viewing his future bride. When he sat in the chair he fell into the pit and the
queen’s servants suffocated him with cushions and hangings. This is the story of a woman who goes to a protest. A group of young men with sticks come and start beating them, driving them apart. She crouches down and protects her face with her forearms, but the strikes still hit her. When she lowers her arms and looks them in the eyes, they seem not to be able to see her any more, and turn away and run after the others. The woman observes them hunting the group through the streets and across hills. In the far distance she sees a castle. She sits up. Last week I went to a variety show with some friends. They offered me a joint and we smoked, sitting on the small benches watching the artists dance and party after their performances. Then
Bettina Hutschek
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I woke up in the arms of my friend Andrea. I had passed out and fallen backwards, knocking my head on the wooden bench behind me. My friends led me out of the venue and made me lie down on a bench. As I looked up into the clear night sky, making out the stars and seeing the concerned faces of my friends over me, I said “Maybe I can hope that by having knocked my head, my brain got the right shake and life will be happy from now on.“ My friend Andrea said “You can definitely hope that.“ The motive for Advisor Aethelbert’ murder is not given in the legend. Whoever blamed Cynethryth was probably trying to deflect the blame from Offa, who was the founder of the monastery where the history was written. The reasons why Aethelbert
became a sainted martyr and the subject of a cult are unclear. One day, this much I know, I hope, I know, I hope I know, I will manage to merge the highs and the lows, to float high with or without heels and to take life‘s dips with a pardoning smirk. Then I will retire into nature, like my namesake. Towards the end of her life, Cynethryth had lost all her worldly power, and finished her life within cloister walls, walking in dignity among a beautiful garden.
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Bios /
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Barumbara Collective (founded in 2017) is an interdisciplinary performance art project which focuses on collaboration with other artists. Barumbara Collective performances are meant to be fluid and the form they take depends on the participants involved, the location of the event and the concept chosen for the project. Loranne Vella Performance, coordination Sephora Gauci Performance
Mac Kam Direction Eleanor Bryce Performance, Light design Francesca Saraullo Performance Serena Galante Performance Danjeli Schembri Music Damiano Perri Additional music By capturing the simple, honest, fleeing moments of life, Etienne Farrell
seeks to produce work which transmits the human narrative. Her work foregrounds the little details, the connections and the emotions which can easily go unnoticed in a fast-paced world. Farrell employs photography’s power of communication, at times fusing it with other media, in order to reveal new understandings and meanings, appealing for the involvement of the audience to the same extent as her own involvement in producing the work.
Charlene Galea is a multi-media conceptual artist whose body is the main instrument. It often navigates in between online identity and physical experiences. Presentation is mostly through performance using clothes as a metaphor. It involves story-telling about various subjects of how the body is lived within contemporary times : these include being a woman, the effect of the media and fake news, space and the environment, human relations and communication. Her installation work
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challenges the viewer, asking for complete attention and immersion, rather than superficial consumption. Complex and political ideas are twisted through a sense of humour and aim to positively influence all those who see it. Roxman Gatt’s multidisciplinary work encompasses text, painting, 3D, video, sound, photography, sculpture, installation and performance, with research which explores sexuality, identity, gender and
consumption. Most recently the artist has been working with themes of humanising and interacting with consumer objects, making the inanimate iconic and fetishised. Mundane aesthetics and the internet become both a tool and a trigger to produce work. Gatt lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include: But Love left no Room for Hydration, UltraStudio, LA (2019), 3hd: Fluid Wor(l)ds, Berlin (2019), Absinthe §3, Spit and Sawdust, London (2019), Suspended Power, Arcade East,
London, (2019), Up is a Relative Concept, Fold, London (2019), 4U, Haus N, Athens, Greece (2019), Perfiction, Harlesden Highstreet, London (2018), Drawings, 650mAh, Brighton, UK (2018), Visions, Programme 3 | Bedwyr Williams, Nunnery Gallery, London, UK, (2018), Here and Now, Valletta Contemporary, Valletta, MT (2018), An Incomplete inventory in 19 Chapters, Malta Pavillion, Biennale di Venezia, IT (2017). In 2015, Roxman was awarded the Chris Garnham Prize, as
well as the Magnum Showcase Online Photography Award in 2013. Bettina Hutschek is a visual Artist, curator and videographer who lives and works between Berlin and Malta. She studied Fine Arts, Art History and Philosophy in Florence, Augsburg, Berlin, Barcelona and Leipzig and spent one year as a Visiting Scholar at TISCH, NYU. In 2017, she co-curated the Malta Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia, together with Raphael
Vella. Today, she uses fragments of different realities to examine the possibilities of knowledge transfer – that is: to tell stories. She is founder and director of FRAGMENTA Malta, a project to organize pop-up exhibitions in the public space of the Maltese Islands. Margerita Pulè is an artist, curator and cultural manager, with a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts. Her practice and research are concerned with the contradictions of politics and social
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realities. She is founder-director of Unfinished Art Space an independent and nomadic space showing contemporary art in Malta, and is currently editor of Artpaper, Malta’s quarterly art publication. Recent curatorial projects include group show Hackable Animals (2019), Alex Urso’s Grand Hotel Europa Part III (2019) and Daily Bread (2019). Tom van Malderen’s work ranges from buildings to objects, installations
and exhibition design. His practice probes the intersections between art, design and architecture, and looks at the material gestures of everyday design and the construction of social space. After obtaining a Master in Architecture at Sint-Lucas Brussels, he worked with Atelier Lucien Kroll in Brussels and Architecture Project in London and Valletta. He forms part of the contemporary art platform FRAGMENTA Malta and the KINEMASTIK international short film festival, and regularly contributes
to international magazines. Since the summer of 2018 Tom runs his own studio. Alongside his visual art and exhibition design practice, he consults in the fields of architecture and design. Letta Shtohryn works mainly with media art, sculpture, textile and intervention. She studied photography at the Art School in Vienna, philosophy and sociology at the University of Vienna and digital art
at the University of Malta. Concerned by our relationship to the digital realm, Letta explores our intertwined coexistence with it. As a method, she employs speculative strategies, poetics and metaphysical investigations that respond to aspects of digital development using new media, sculpture, video games, commercial goods and imagery. Her exhibitions and residencies include “LisbonLQ2.jpeg” at Zaratan Arte Contemporanea,
Lisbon, “AlgorithmicOracle” at Vanity Projects by Daata Editions, “Object, Objetc, Objecc” at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta, “Little HellGate” group show by Daata Editions at Frieze Art Fair, New York, “Dream Catcher” group show by Daata xPhillips at The Box @ Phillips, New York, “An area of some importance” at Digitalartistresidency. org, TextileMemory at Tętno, Wroclaw, and “The Tension of Things Unsaid” at Listastofan, Reykjavik.
Thanks to the artists and exhibition designer. Thanks to the MUĹťA team for their support, and to Spazju Kreattiv and Wiki Community Malta for their collaboration.
This project is supported by Arts Council Malta - Malta Arts Fund