A scrim ( mesh fabric ) is a lightweight, open-weave material used primarily in theatrical performances and veils. Depending on the lights, the fabric may be visible or invisible, and it often serves as reinforcement for repairing damaged fibers. Generally Thinking Like A Scrim was a book by Tel Adnan and Lynn Marie Kirby. Just as a scrim’, s presence changes with light, our experience of the world is shaped by many, usually overlapping facets, like palimpsestic support and folds that hold.
Textiles act as indicators of our lives, from the waste brought on by large use of textiles to the canvas stretched as an image, from the crib material in which we are wrapped at birth to the clothes we choose for burial. For this unfolding present, Shimmer explores the life cycle of garments, delving deeply through the act of making. Textiles have the ability to discuss topics that cannot be expressed in any other method because they speak a language that transcends cultures and even goes beneath them.
The show draws inspiration from the layered pattern found in the numerous exhibits that will open in June and March of that year. First works by Hana Mileti combine these two parts, much like a scrim that gives fabric structure while remaining pliable to movement.
These first Hana Mileti pieces of art restore everyday-life events, like side-view car mirrors that are tucked away in natural duct tape. These works, 90 inches from the ground and the top of a car windows or mirror, are meant to reflect the social and cultural realities in which the performer herself works.
Our interest in fashion and how washing affects the various stages of our existence stems from our interest in textiles. We are interested in how dressing up and adorning ourselves reflects our hopes, goals, and intentions toward one another. Dressing may serve to cover, make personal, conceal from view, or transform us into someone else. The concept of costuming (etymologically related to ‘, customs ’, ) is deeply layered in the work of Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, who have extensively used jewelry, sweaters, coveralls, period costumes, wigs, prosthetic makeup, leather, sequins, and chains. Costume creates a figure, fits or queries norms and standards.
Their work,” Wall Necklace ( Otherworldly II )”, exhibited at Shimmer, is a sculpture of architectural jewelry dressing Shimmer up. For the artists, stores are like hairstyles that, balancing between the complex and the beautiful, have the ability to assist us move in and out of worlds. They give us the ability to clip a finger over the rim of a habit and embodied a brand-new possible way of interacting with one another.
Tenant of Culture practices their work using the offcuts of clothing, draped in the space between commodities and antiquities, to the detriment of both the professional and the decorative. Tenant of Culture uses pieces of fast fashion to create beautifully stitched artworks usually embellished with brand labels, zippers, and elastic toggles while drawing inspiration from fashion studies. In” Dry Fit ( Series )” ( 2022 ), the artwork blurs the boundary of the space through polyester hoods and collars, and water-repellent materials that repel rather than absorb. These pieces assemble the varied life and purposes of previous owners in a gentle compilation of how we communicate with one another. It’s difficult to define the indexical record of the source material. These elements, made to look more or less the same, get a fresh resonance with our body through their reassemblage.
Lotus L. Kang creates intimate, materialized environments that are both attractive and fleshy in his artwork. Kang’s installations may appear red and burnished in stark contrast to the great steel fixtures and aluminium cast objects, which are known for her large-scale bolts of photographic film that she “tans” in the sun. Finding balance between the inside and the outside, intimate and expansive is a constant theme in Wang’s paintings. All can be found in” Receiver Transmitter ( Root )” ( 2023 ) at Shimmer. A red construction bag that is visible immediately as protective material on construction sites and industrial areas like the Rotterdam Port can be seen peering from beneath a fragrant tatami mat. The industrial material in Kang ’, s work is a recurring element in her sculpture installations. Pairing it with galvanized steel or aluminum cast fruits, vegetables, or roots ( or are they intestines ), the works hold a cultural memory woven in burlap sacks, woven tatami mat ( for a single person ) —a fabric for protection, memory in deep memory held in the gut.
What happens to the geographical boundaries when the land itself moves?, by Cihad Caner, is a digital red piece of fabric that floats into the frame. A red flag, a warning signal. Historically, the red flag on a ship means” no mercy”, but it is also a symbol of left-wing ideologies. The narrator whispers the most frequently used keywords from 485 online news articles on the refugee and climate crises, both of which are inextricably linked, as an empty representative of no nation for Caner.
Made between 2016 and 2017, the video connects the Syrian drought and how it became , one of the major factors behind the , country’s civil war. “, What happens to the geographical borders when the land itself moves ”, is as relevant today as it was then. Where basic human needs turn into commodities, into capital, into speculation, and into war. Systems of no mercy.
Daniel Giles has been examining patterns of behavior perpetuated by racial, economic, social, and cultural supremacy, which are frequently found on architectural and textile designs. Giles has been looking at the repetitive, long-lasting work of making and its explicit, long-term effects on the body in his” Untitled ( White Paintings )” series. Through the repetitive actions of building layers of floral textile motifs—think of the folding, refolding, and folding again of the arabesque—it appears as though Giles has begun to both uncover and emerge from the surface. The surfaces are sifted, becoming ever softer in graphite powder, giving off a velvety feel of flocking, of thin layers that make it necessary for the audience to move back and forth past the work. In this way, the viewer’s efforts are destabilized, with the motifs appearing and disappearing based on where your body locates itself and, in particular, where we are found in the folds of the motif.
Participating artists:
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Cihad Caner, Daniel Giles, Hana Miletić, Lotus L. Kang, and Tenant of Culture
Curated by
Eloise Sweetman, Jason Hendrik Hansma
at SHIMMER
until August 11, 2024