Undermining Dichotomies – Artwork Jewellery Discussion board

• Verena Sieber-Fuchs is a grasp at crocheting her on a regular basis life. She furiously collects all the pieces round her, utilizing it to discuss pleasure, sorrows, or politics
• It’s a recreation with all types of supplies, and no treasured ones to make the completed product treasured
• We spoke to the Swiss maker on the event of her solo exhibition, The 12 months of the Carnation, held at Galeria Tereza Seabra, in Lisbon, Portugal, October 25–November 30, 2024

Marta Costa Reis: Do you see your self as a jewellery artist or as a textile artist? Is there even a distinction between these two crafts in the way in which you take into account your work? What makes one work a bit of jewellery whereas one other is a textile work?
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: The boundaries are fluid, so I discover myself unable to take a transparent place right here. Total, I consider that this distinction, whether it is significant and fascinating, must be made by the observer.

The title of your exhibition at Galeria Tereza Seabra is The 12 months of the Carnation, which appears to discuss with the Carnation Revolution that occurred in Portugal in 1974 and introduced democracy to the nation. How is it that you simply, coming from Switzerland, selected this title and this theme?
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: On the event of Tereza’s invitation to exhibit in her gallery through the 12 months of the fiftieth anniversary of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, I spontaneously related it with the crimson carnation worn throughout Could Day demonstrations as an emblem of worldwide solidarity, resistance, and freedom—an emblem that skilled a transferring renaissance on April 25, 1974, in Portugal.

Throughout Could Day demonstrations right here, the police use rubber bullets towards rioting fringe teams, as they did extensively through the youth riots of the Nineteen Eighties. So the hyperlink was clear to me: Crimson carnations and rubber bullets right here, and, much more considerably there in Portugal, lethal weapons silenced by crimson carnations positioned in rifle barrels. In each instances, nonetheless, a glimmer of hope in immediately’s world of raging wars!

The items you might be displaying are very spectacular. There are numerous works on this present and it’s fairly a sight to have all of them in the identical house. They’ve fairly an ethereal high quality. Some appear to be nearly immaterial, however on the identical they’re very sensuous, sensual even. One can clearly think about them embracing the physique and in that second changing into very corporeal.
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: Undermining or outsmarting the unlucky dichotomy of physique and thoughts, materiality and immateriality, is the last word self-discipline of any artwork. If I’ve succeeded on this even barely, it might make me completely satisfied.

One other ingredient that could be very current in your work is using recycled supplies. How did this come to be? I think about the gathering, group, and choice of these supplies is a vital a part of the method, apart from the making itself.
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: For me, an inexhaustible supply of inspiration is the continuation and reuse of disposable gadgets—accumulating them, holding them, and entrusting them to the intelligence of the arms in a sort of trance, thus reworking them into one other state of being, transferring them from their obvious worthlessness to worth.

A few of these supplies are natural—onion or garlic skins, for instance. Others, equivalent to aluminum foil, could final “without end.” Do you consider it in these phrases? Does the permanence or impermanence of the work concern you?
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: No, I don’t take into consideration this. Every little thing originates from the identical matrix and is directed towards the identical objective: creating type from a shapeless mass, whether or not from pig bladders, movie sheets, garlic peels, rubber bullets, butcher paper, paper clips, or blister packs that held remedy.

We will additionally see this selection of fabric as humorous and joyful. That’s one other very sturdy impression in your items: They’re joyful and even humoristic. Not simply the large necklaces with uncommon supplies, however the tiny hats, the mushroom objects. Is that an necessary function for you?
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: If humor is the moisture that lends vibrancy and shimmer to all the pieces dry and dusty, then it’s undoubtedly an necessary ingredient for me.

You’ve a protracted historical past with Galeria Tereza Seabra, and it’s not that usually that we will see your work internationally in galleries (though it is vitally current in museums). What’s necessary for you in your relationship with a gallery?
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: Whereas I used to be capable of exhibit repeatedly in galleries (in NYC, Washington, DC, Quebec, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Cologne, Munich, Amsterdam, Gothenburg) for a very long time, this has develop into rarer, partly as a result of many galleries have closed, gallery house owners have handed away, and I’ve grown older.

How do you are feeling concerning the show of this exhibition at Galeria Tereza Seabra?
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: The presentation at Galeria Tereza Seabra is great, and I wish to take this chance to sincerely thank Tereza and her total crew—Catarina, Kathi, and Felix Menziger—for this.

Associated: Learn an interview with Tereza Seabra, the proprietor and curator of the gallery that confirmed The 12 months of the Carnation, right here.

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