Angela Rose Voulgarelis and Tereza Swanda’s two-person
exhibition speaks to the compounded issue of the silencing of marginalized
voices, specifically those of women within global patriarchy. Swanda approaches
the theme from an economic and political angle while Voulgarelis draws upon
social exchange. The planned projects quietly create subtle spaces for
catharsis. Conversations become social sculptures; Story telling becomes a shared exchange.
In Mutual Cleanse, Swanda, a native of
Czech Republic, carves and paint portraits into soap. Portraiture usually reserved
for the elite, politicians or clergy is dedicated to the cleaning women
collecting spare change all throughout Prague’s public restrooms. Swanda paints
their visage into her grandmother’s collection of 120 bars of soap that
she ‘skladovala’ (which
means stored but more so, stacked with care) in her one bedroom apartment in
Czechoslovakia during Communism. Swanda brings the soap back to a functional
state. Gallery viewers will use one bar
at a time for their bathroom use replacing the washed soap back on exhibition.
The piece is about un-labeling, erasing, disintegration, and disappearance.
Swanda explores and demonstrates one’s effect on another.
Airing Dirty Laundry is an ongoing collaborative
performance installation in which Voulgarelis, a native New Yorker, and Swanda’s
collaborator of 7 years, sits among hundreds of folded flat white sheets and
embroiders a single line onto one at a time. She hangs them from laundry lines
in public space. She offers passersby a phrase card with the text, “I Should…”, “Don’t Be Too…”,
“Don’t…”, or “Not Enough…” and invites them to complete it as well as to
embroider alongside her. She asks each
person to consider the notion of “airing dirty laundry”. The pencil used to fill
out the card is offered in exchange. Embroidery, as a central visual element, reveals
connection between meditation and everyday actions and collapses the hierarchy
between “High Art” and domestic labor.
Pradelna Bohnice, is a contemporary project space located 5
km north of Prague and part of the largest psychiatric ward in Czech Republic. As
its name alludes, (Pradelna means Laundromat), it was a laundry facility
washing the whole of the institution’s linens from 1909 to 1993. Within its
walls one feels the working conditions of thousands of women who scrubbed
laundry for a century, concealing the hierarchy between those institutionalized
and the institution. This art space sits on the grounds of a fully functioning
hospital with roughly 1300 patients and 1000 employees—the past is very much
present.
Bars line all windows. The central entrance has very high
ceilings which dwarf the visitor but is similar to an entrance of a chapel. The
interior is poorly lit, cold and grey. Holes where piping used to run and
missing tiles are throughout, as well as randomly placed slabs of cement where
machines and tables were arranged. Sound echoes, especially high heeled shoes.
We intervene on the materials of a laundromat, on bars of
soap, and hundreds of flat white sheets hung from laundry lines. However we switch
the paradigm.
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