The Yellow Who Wants
Uppsala KonstmuseumCurated by Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson
May 12 - August 21, 2016
Tamar Ettun's first solo show in Sweden will take place at Uppsala Art Museum, following a residency at Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee´s International Programme for Visual Artists in Stockholm. As a performance artist, trained as a sculptor, Tamar Ettun’s artistic practice incorporates both movement and stillness. The duality has a symbolical impact where stillness and trauma are juxtaposed by movement and empathy. Trauma damages the ability of an individual to feel empathy and desire towards the other.
Ettun will present Yellow, the second installment of her ongoing tetralogy, Mauve Bird with Yellow Teeth Red Feathers Green Feet and a Rose Belly. Each part of the tetralogy will be based on a color and a season. The first part – Blue – was presented as a performance at the Watermill Center and as an exhibition at Fridman Gallery in New York in November 2015. Bodily movements and feelings are expressed through the experience of color – a bright yellow inflatable and casted bodily plaster sculptures combined with object trouvé. Ettun’s works are a formal investigation of materials and the visceral world. She breaks apart and assembles objects that would not normally be combined, which creates unique and transformative pieces that evoke abstracted narratives in a surrealistic manner.
In the project, Ettun will interlace her personal history and identity as an Israeli with the encounter of the local setting in Uppsala – the medieval town, the old University, the Castle, the Botanical Gardens, etc. The art expresses emotional knowledge, where the daily rituals, poems and objects surrounding us can mirror larger political processes. The show will also look back on some of her early performative videos and simultaneously present recent videos choreographed by the artist and performed with members of The Moving Company. Absurd physical tasks are performed by movers interacting with objects in an abstracted narrative.
The Yellow Who Wants explores the conception of Eros and should be viewed as a sequel to the Blue chapter that dealt with empathy. Eros stems from the same source, but is also a multifaceted driving force that generates emotions and movement within a person and a community. It can create empathy, fear, compassion, and desire between one and the other. In Ettun’s symbolic language, the power of desire on its own is what creates the movement and avoids the stillness, fights death – the ultimate stillness.
The exhibition space will include a “performative gallery” that changes throughout the duration of the show, presents sculpture in a performative way and incorporates artist talks and dance as part of the exhibition. During May 6-14, Ettun will be take part in Revolve Performance Art Days, an international festival organized by the Museum, Uppsala Konsert & Kongress, and Köttinspektionen – Dance in Uppsala. The tradition of experimental performance art focusing on the body is at the core, but the festival is also open to different performative expressions in search for broader theoretical discussion on contemporary performance art. Ettun and The Moving Company will perform Yellow in the Botanical Gardens as part of the opening of The Yellow Who Wants.
In collaboration with Iaspis, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee, With support of Artis Grant program