Opening: 24 March, 2017
Duration: 25 March – 07 May, 2017
Uqbar, Berlin
Duo exhibition with works by Josefin Arnell and Natasja Loutchko
If you’re a daughter, think of your mother as a woman with her “own wounds and hurts” who was born and raised in a different generation with different values and difficult family relationships and issues. A random quote from a website called psychcentral.com in an article titled “15 Insights on Improving Mother-Daughter Relationships”.
But isn’t everyone a person with their own wounds and hurts? I want my mother to be strong and wise and filled with knowledge through experience, and willing to dispense this knowledge onto me and all her clothes from bygone eras, which will fit me perfectly because if I grew inside her then her blood is my blood and I’m made from her flesh, thus we are the same clothing size because I am half her.
Why are we so impatient with the people we love?
EVBG is excited to present MAMACAMP, a collaborative duo exhibition that brings together works by artists Josefin Arnell and Natasja Loutchko. Arnell and Loutchko met in the summer of 2016 and realized that their sisters had the same names and that their moms might be using the same bleaching brand. They started Mamacamp as an ongoing dialogue about inherited trauma and sisterhood in and between their practices. The two featured films document the travels that both artists undertook with their mothers. Loutchko went to California to undergo a mental SPA. Arnell took her mother to Brazil to meet the famous spiritual healer John of God. The mothers perform for the camera, slipping in and out of character, receiving instructions or asking for them. Yes,open that door again, no, why can’t you do it like that. Mother and daughter on a voyage. Why are you always like this? Is this trip undertaken for the purpose of making work, does a mother know when you are subverting your truth? Yes, because she is your mother. Rub mud on her face, careful near her eyes, I take care of you, we are close, my fingers on your skin, my finger in your ear.A make-believe teenage bedroom is constructed in the exhibition space, a place of angst and safety. The nineties with a flat screen TV. The walls covered in posters, here are all my interests, all of my insides splashed on the outside. I’m a HORSEGIRL. Too old for stuffed animals but you can hug me.
Who is in control now? The horse or me? I ride the horse, I control the horse, don’t I? I know I don’t, we collaborate on control. I hold the reigns, I pull, you pull back, I braid your tail, don’t you look pretty but I am pretty too. My ponytail is so tight. Something to hold on to. We’re going faster now, I ride you, my ass bounces but I follow the movement.Josefin Arnell (Amsterdam/NL, Berlin/DE)Born 1984 in Sweden. Arnell holds an MA in Dirty Art from Sandberg Instituut and participated in the 2 years artist in residence program at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, 2015/2016. Through video, installation, performance and poetry she navigates between exuberances and self-exploration. She is the other half of the artist duo HellFun together with Max Göran, that prefer to be brave and pathetic rather than drowning in shame.Natasja Loutchko (Berlin/DE)Born 1983 in Sweden. Loutchko received a Meisterschüler degree from Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main in 2014 and a BFA from Konstfack Universitz of Art in 2009. Since 2015 Loutchko runs the artist project CAVE3000 in her apartment/studio. CAVE3000 aims to investigate the balance between private and public through dialogue with other artists. Personal experiences shape the videos, performances, installations and works on paper. In subtle, often grim tales she pursues social phenomena, such as the feelings of loneliness, alienation and sexuality.
