Undermining Dichotomies – Artwork Jewellery Discussion board

• Verena Sieber-Fuchs is a grasp at crocheting her on a regular basis life. She furiously collects every little thing round her, utilizing it to talk about pleasure, sorrows, or politics
• It’s a sport with every kind 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 best way you contemplate your work? What makes one work a bit of knickknack 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. General, I imagine 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 pink 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 in opposition to rioting fringe teams, as they did extensively through the youth riots of the Nineteen Eighties. So the hyperlink was clear to me: Purple carnations and rubber bullets right here, and, much more considerably there in Portugal, lethal weapons silenced by pink carnations positioned in rifle barrels. In each instances, nevertheless, a glimmer of hope in at present’s world of raging wars!

The items you might be exhibiting are very spectacular. There are lots of works on this present and it’s fairly a sight to have all of them in the identical area. They’ve fairly an ethereal high quality. Some appear to be virtually immaterial, however on the similar 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 final word self-discipline of any artwork. If I’ve succeeded on this even barely, it might make me completely happy.

One other ingredient that could be very current in your work is the usage of recycled supplies. How did this come to be? I think about the gathering, group, and number of these supplies is an important a part of the method, in addition to the making itself.
Verena Sieber-Fuchs: For me, an inexhaustible supply of inspiration is the continuation and reuse of disposable objects—gathering them, holding them, and entrusting them to the intelligence of the palms 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 “eternally.” 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. The whole lot originates from the identical matrix and is directed towards the identical purpose: 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 medicine.

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

You will have an extended historical past with Galeria Tereza Seabra, and it’s not that always that we will see your work internationally in galleries (though it is rather 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 grow to be 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 superb, and I want to take this chance to sincerely thank Tereza and her complete staff—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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