thenortherncharter

23 January 2018

Between November 2017 and February 2018 CIRCA Projects invited a number of guests who take interesting and unique approaches to working with archival material, rethinking the contemporary by moving away from dominant narratives in history. Guests shared and discussed their work alongside recent artworks made by Giles Bailey & CIRCA Projects.

Nadia Hebson:

“When considering the legacy of American painter Christina Ramberg and her creative female circle I have made paintings in concert with large scale prints, objects and text. When called to I’ve described the work through a narrative of recuperation, a reconsideration of overlooked histories, aware this was a partial truth perhaps more diminishing than expanding.

One afternoon in Antwerp the writers Daniela Cascella , Kate Briggs and myself met to discuss Daniela book Singed, Daniela had just read an excerpt that described her coming to Clarice Lispector, a woman writer drawn to a woman writer, but a description of recuperation wasn’t enough to describe this exchange. Daniela, Kate and myself searched for another way to acknowledge this work, our work and the impulses that drive it, criticism seemed like the only option.

Italian feminist Carla Lonzi had a theory that in order to break the monologue of patriarchal history women needed to articulate their subjective experience through a collective endeavour, as unexpected subjects they could converse with other women both in and across time. Lonzi named this political act resonance, a means by which to avoid complicity with the patriarchy, a means by which to undo the roles linked to women’s oppression.

If the work I make needs to resist categories, how do I talk about it, how do I make it and what is it? Not interested in re-configuring canons but addressing alternative histories through self-reflexive means (maybe?) how do we even start a conversation, please lets start a conversation”.

Image: Vyt Residency programme, New York May, 2014