Ways of Journeying
3/9-3/10 2021
Madeleine Aleman (SE)
Vala T. Foltyn (PL/DK/SE)
Sebastian Wahlforss (SE)
Curator: Maria Norrman (SE)
Galleri CC, Båstadsgatan 4, Malmö, Sweden
4/9, 20/9 and 29/9 – Performance video screenings and dinner/small meal by Madeleine Aleman. Screening of the videos Axels Måltid, En måltid i Swedenborgs lusthus and Hilmas Måltid.
24/9 2021 – Performance by Vala.T Foltyn
The exhibition Ways of Journeying shows three artists who all work around rituals, journeys, dreams or meditations. Journeying is a double sided term used to connote both the spiritual path of an individual, which can involve travelling in the physical world, and is also a word used to describe travelling in a dreamlike realm, through meditations or other influences.
Sebastian Wahlforss film Fragments of Illumination (18 min, 2017) is an exploration of filmic intensities and on light itself, which is linked to the film medium and the subject of the film: the city of Varanasi, India, also known as Kashi which means luminous in sanskrit.Fragments of Illumination is a dreamscape-like journey through the city at night. Black and white images enhance the light and the dark as Wahlforss acts as an onlooker of Varanasi, and carefully chooses his filmic fragments to not fall into deep set filmic clichés. The film meditates on the state of the traveller, curious of their environment, connecting from a distance with what they see, with humans and non humans.
Sebastian Wahlforss (b. 1982 in Stockholm, Sweden) works with consciousness and representation from a post-materialistic perspective. He has participated in exhibitions at Ujazdowski CCA (Warsaw, PL), The Bomb Factory (London, UK), Coyote (Stockholm, SWE) among others and has screened his films at festivals such as Göteborg film festival and Visions du Réel.
Madeleine Aleman uses the method Active Imagination, developed by the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung, when creating her work. The method leads to a kind of meditative state which opens up a person to the unconscious and to the spiritual world. Aleman works with historical figures such as the doctor and writer Axel Munthe (1857-1949), the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and the artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), whom Aleman has a very close connection to.
In the exhibition at Galleri CC, she shows blackboard drawings, made right after practicing Active Imagination. One of the blackboards will be changeable and re-drawn every week during the exhibition period.During the exhibition period Aleman will host three film screenings where she shows documentation of three performance dinners made for the spirits of Munthe, Swedenborg and af Klint, plus invited guest spirits. Aleman speaks with them, asks questions and mediates their answers to us. She finishes every three folded performance with a sound ritual. Short versions of these dinners are shown in the exhibition.
Madeleine Aleman (b. 1959 in Stockholm, Sweden) uses different materials and techniques in her art, but the driving force is the same; she integrates her passions, namely art, psychology and spirituality. Since 2012 she has expressed herself through performance, drawing and printmaking. Aleman practices different techniques to reach hypnagogic states of consciousness and she also uses the Chinese oracle I Ching for divination. As an artist, to put oneself in hypnagogic states offers the opportunity to clear away layers of preconceived notions, to get around incorporated habit patterns and to find a more direct, inner mode of expression.
Madeleine Aleman has studied at the University College of Arts, Craft and Design and is also a certified Art Therapist. She has exhibited throughout Sweden and also in Spain, China and Canada. She lives and works in Malmö, Sweden.
www.aleman.se
Vala T. Foltyn is a performance artist, researcher, queer witch. She is also a founder of Lamella – the house of queer arts in Kraków, Poland. She is currently working on her research at Malmö Art Academy. The research proposal tackles the idea of queering the archives as a speculative practice and an attempt for subversing and reclaiming the relationship of power and knowledge by tracing the invisible, hidden and lost. The project focuses specifically on the analysis of the case of a century old villa located in Kraków, Poland, whose history and legacy are at risk to be forgotten. The villa was built in 1907 and in last severeal years sheltered queer art community. She works with the notions of witchcraft and queering the archives of the villa as mapping the magic of its former tenants, ghosts, dreams, hallucinations and other non-human beings.
Her installation “Witching the unspoken” for the exhibition is a queer translation of the archives into a textile matter. She also presents performance documentation “Vala for Aneta” by Maja Chiara Faber. The ritual of mourning was performed in her former house in 2018, shortly before the villa was shut down due to development plans of the area.Vala T. Foltyn will do a live performance on Friday 24 September at 19.00. The performance is a reenactment of the mourning ritual, a queer elegy.
Thank you: Galleri Format
