Warm welcome to the opening of the online exhibition of the digital residency Woven Network Nordics by artists Brynhild Bye-Tiller (NO), Emma Hirsk (SE/IE), Dina Abu Hamdan (DK/JO) and Katarzyna Piórek (SE/PL). During this live-streamed event the artists presented their works and walked us through the online presentation.
Since April 2021 the four artists have been working in a tight group as a part of the digital residency Woven Network Nordics working with the topics of COVID-19 affecting the role of women and women artists, using digital tools and socially engaged approaches.
The exhibition is available to view online at http://wovenart.works/wnnordics from 14 January. Read below to find out more about the individual artists’ works and the project.
Brynhild Bye-Tiller: Three Articles
My individual work for Woven Network Nordics and final exhibition titled “Three Articles”, consists of three journalistic articles as single web-pages linked together as related stories. Each page presents one story from The Kintsugi Project (2020-2021), with titles like: “I’m terrified of infecting someone else”, “Being next of kin – so much more than family” and “Powerful visual stories about next of kin”.
The “Three Articles” are based on The Kintsugi Project which began in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic, when a group of women came together to discuss, investigate and share experiences of being ‘Next of Kin’. They asked themselves what does it mean to be next of kin, who are next of kin? Is it your family or someone else? and what happens if for some reason you are not able to be next of kin?
My individual work for Woven Network Nordics and final exhibition titled “Three Articles”, consists of three journalistic articles as single web-pages linked together as related stories. Each page presents one story from The Kintsugi Project (2020-2021), with titles like: “I’m terrified of infecting someone else”, “Being next of kin – so much more than family” and “Powerful visual stories about next of kin”.
The “Three Articles” are based on The Kintsugi Project which began in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic, when a group of women came together to discuss, investigate and share experiences of being ‘Next of Kin’. They asked themselves what does it mean to be next of kin, who are next of kin? Is it your family or someone else? and what happens if for some reason you are not able to be next of kin?
Emma Hirsk: Grief Cartographies
‘The Grief Cartographies’ is a long-term processual body of work that considers the acute intimacies of both private and collective loss, trauma and grief, within the context of a global Covid pandemic. As an artist-researcher from Northern Ireland, based in Sweden, this project is borne from the deeply private loss of my mother earlier this year, and contextualised against the backdrop of pandemic restrictions across travel, borders, contact, care, family, illness and death.
Incorporating the series’ “Sculptures for my Mother” and more recent photographic works, “Can you See/ Are you There?” this residency research maps a path of grief cloven by time, touch, distance, identities, memories, geographies, and covid restrictions, and presents photographs, performances, films, drawings/writings, maps, and socio-spatial practices as a way through grief, and to somehow keep a connection to, and remembrance of my mother.
‘The Grief Cartographies’ is a long-term processual body of work that considers the acute intimacies of both private and collective loss, trauma and grief, within the context of a global Covid pandemic. As an artist-researcher from Northern Ireland, based in Sweden, this project is borne from the deeply private loss of my mother earlier this year, and contextualised against the backdrop of pandemic restrictions across travel, borders, contact, care, family, illness and death.
Incorporating the series’ “Sculptures for my Mother” and more recent photographic works, “Can you See/ Are you There?” this residency research maps a path of grief cloven by time, touch, distance, identities, memories, geographies, and covid restrictions, and presents photographs, performances, films, drawings/writings, maps, and socio-spatial practices as a way through grief, and to somehow keep a connection to, and remembrance of my mother.
Dina Abu Hamdan: The HUG
The choreography movement choir ‘HUG’, is based on the need to reconstruct and recreate our daily routines, our connections to each other and the spaces we live in.
A large crowd of children, youth, municipality and local organizations’ employees come together in their own soundscape bubble, yet collectively feel each other’s movement in an open public space. Being split between the individual and the collective need, reflecting on the fear of a crowd in a pandemic and the need of the human collective encounter.
The public is invited to experience the HUG silently or following the music, visually live or online.
The project is produced by the municipality of Ringkøbing Skjern in West Jutland – Denmark with the support of the Danish Kunstfond as part of 100 days of culture and sport.
The HUG is a touring project that aims to visit many cities and bring citizens together.
The choreography movement choir ‘HUG’, is based on the need to reconstruct and recreate our daily routines, our connections to each other and the spaces we live in.
A large crowd of children, youth, municipality and local organizations’ employees come together in their own soundscape bubble, yet collectively feel each other’s movement in an open public space. Being split between the individual and the collective need, reflecting on the fear of a crowd in a pandemic and the need of the human collective encounter.
The public is invited to experience the HUG silently or following the music, visually live or online.
The project is produced by the municipality of Ringkøbing Skjern in West Jutland – Denmark with the support of the Danish Kunstfond as part of 100 days of culture and sport.
The HUG is a touring project that aims to visit many cities and bring citizens together.
Katarzyna Piórek: Kluven
Kluven is a documentary project, to be developed and created from a series of interviews with migrant women who have been forced or have chosen to move from their homeland to new life situations with unknown cultural references, social codes and political heritage.
Within Kluven, I want to focus on invisible problems and illustrate the burdens of the human
condition. I examine the identity of immigrants through my own perspective and try to find a
common narrative. Through a collection of interviews, I also correlate my own personal experiences with the emotional conflicts, compromises, struggles to balance between two worlds, to cross borders and start anew in an unknown country, to highlight the global fate of immigrants.
Kluven is a documentary project, to be developed and created from a series of interviews with migrant women who have been forced or have chosen to move from their homeland to new life situations with unknown cultural references, social codes and political heritage.
Within Kluven, I want to focus on invisible problems and illustrate the burdens of the human
condition. I examine the identity of immigrants through my own perspective and try to find a
common narrative. Through a collection of interviews, I also correlate my own personal experiences with the emotional conflicts, compromises, struggles to balance between two worlds, to cross borders and start anew in an unknown country, to highlight the global fate of immigrants.