Tag: london | Femme Art Review

The Bed: In Discussion with Maayan Sophia Weisstub

Maayan Sophia Weisstub. *The Bed.* The Museum of the Home. Images Courtesy of the artist.

Interview by Adi Berardini

CW: Discussion of domestic abuse

Displayed at the Museum of the Home as part of the Festival of Sleep from June to September 2022, The Bed by Maayan Sophia Weisstub is a powerful installation that takes the visuals of bruises and injury and pairs them with the comfort of a bed. Although the bed is often associated with solace and security, for domestic abuse survivors, a bed can hold complex and negative associations. As Weisstub explains, The Bed explores the physical, mental, and emotional toll of domestic abuse, addressing how even after the bruises fade, the emotional scars still linger. The installation sparks difficult but essential conversations about domestic abuse to ultimately create awareness and healing.

Currently based in London, UK, Maayan Sophia Weisstub is an interdisciplinary artist working with a range of media from drawing, animation, collage, and sculpture and installation. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Weisstub has shown at the Saatchi Gallery, Christie’s, and Pavlov’s Dog Gallery. Her work has also been featured in White Hot Magazine, Kaltblut, and Design Taxi, among others. The following conversation discusses The Bed and her broader practice.

Can you speak more about your installation The Bed at the Museum of the Home which aims to raise awareness and reflect upon domestic violence against primarily women and children?

Raising awareness is regarding everyone. It’s commonly towards women and children but also towards men, I don’t want to take that part away. It’s a topic that always concerned me, like many other social topics. I also did a project with a graphic design office in Munich last year to raise awareness about violence against women. It’s not the first project where I’m dealing with this topic. I wanted to do a bit more because a lot of my work is naturally [based on] the things I deal with. It’s important for me also to touch on other topics and make a little change or protest. It’s not always easy for me to go outside and protest so I can raise awareness in a way that I can or know how to. This is my way to contribute to it as a start [to a conversation about] this topic.

I didn’t want this to be about me or my experience, but it touches me in personal areas. I wanted it to be in the entire spectrum of domestic abuse. I think it touches most people in some places. Whether it’s been sexual abuse or verbal abuse that I think many people have experienced in some sense from parents or siblings, or a partner a lot of times. Sometimes we don’t necessarily think of it as scarring or domestic abuse, but they are all on the spectrum. And then, of course, the more severe ones—I don’t know if more severe, cause it all depends on the effect—but the physical violence and abuse that we hear about in the news.

We don’t hear about it [often], but during COVID, we heard about it more because cases were rising since more people were at home. I think [people] felt frustrated with their conditions, and many were out of work and didn’t make the money they needed, or they took their aggression on their partners or children. I think it’s something that should be [discussed] more because I feel like there’s not enough attention [paid to] it. Then I decided I wanted to do a piece about it, and I had this idea, like a metaphor.

The Bed evocatively bridges the personal and the public and juxtaposes the softness and respite of a bed with the pain of physical violence. Can you elaborate on your approach to using these opposites and how The Bed addresses trauma and survival?

I see the bed as a shelter where you can rest at the end of the day or even cry when you need to be with yourself. Also, intimate relationships and physical contact happen in bed. So, the bed is a very personal, private, or intimate symbol. On the one hand, it’s supposed to be the safe place where you could be vulnerable. Then, on the other hand, it’s also like it can be a door to nightmares or for dark things that may happen in situations in bedrooms, behind closed doors as well.

There’s bruised skin [depicted] in different stages of healing. I researched bruises and looked at photos of domestic views of survivors. I wanted it to [reflect] different stages, but still, there are some scars there. Some heal, some don’t, and some stay forever.

The bed is a very personal, private, or intimate symbol.

Then I approached and was in contact with Refuge, a charity that helps children and women who are survivors of domestic abuse. They sent me some materials and I researched from people around me and my own experiences. [I was in] contact with them regarding the text I wrote that accompanies the artwork, to ensure that it’s not offensive. I wrote victims at the beginning, and later they told me that it’s correct to say survivors, not victims in this case of domestic abuse. That was the only thing, but it’s a big thing to change. I think it’s important.

Then I reached out to a Museum of the Home, it was very fortunate that they did the sleeping exhibition [Festival of Sleep]. It fit well with their program. I reached out to other places, but this was the place I wanted the most because I feel like they’re very involved with the community and social topics. I was very intrigued by The Museum of the Home. It’s a beautiful building that was built in the 1700s. The head of the Ironmonger Society built it for retired ironmongers and widows of ironmongers. And later it was bought and turned into a Museum of the Home in the fifties where it showed different sets of interiors in Britain to teach people about the history.

They do a lot of community workshops and stuff with different communities, such as Turkish, Jewish, Indian, or African, they have a very diverse community coming to the museum. I felt that it would be the best place to show The Bed. Of course, I want it to be shown in galleries and museums as well, but it’s also important for me to show it to audiences that aren’t necessarily the same audiences who would go to the Tate. It’s also free so there are a lot of different audiences that would come and see it. It’s not necessarily [just] artsy people. Once they said that it fits, I [thought that] this is the best match.

I co-hosted a workshop about The Bed on September 28th with a friend who is a designer. It was a therapeutic workshop quilting scars, so attendees added their scars to this communal blanket. It was informative and provided a safe space to do craft work together. I think it added to the experience of The Bed shown there.

It might be hard to gauge, but what has the response been like, do people often share their stories with you?

I went there with friends, [a couple of] art curators and a journalist to show them the work. I mainly got responses from people I went with because museum visitors didn’t know that I made it. I like that because then I can see their response from the side.

There was one woman who went there, I saw her staying there and taking a photo, and then she told me and my friend that it was “very powerful.” That was very nice to hear. Also, I saw a couple come in, and one woman said to the other, “The bed is very small,” and then she walked out. The work is not easy to digest. I know from my friends that they had different responses.

Some people said it’s meaningful and powerful. With these kinds of abuses, you tend to feel a sort of loyalty to the person who has done that to you, whether it’s a family member or a partner. You don’t want to make them look bad. I don’t feel people necessarily have to share their experience if they don’t want to. If they brought it up, I would ask and talk, but I wouldn’t force anyone into an inconvenient or uncomfortable spot. I hope one day we will be able to talk more openly about the pain that we go through and not be ashamed of it, or scared to share, or worried about making someone else look bad if they’ve done something wrong.

With friends, it takes time to gain trust and feel safe enough to share traumas. It takes a certain degree of knowing each other to share these vulnerable experiences.

Maayan Sophia Weisstub. Mnēmē, *A Breathing Object*. 2021.

Your work commonly connects inanimate objects to emotional feeling (such as a table and chair, with the kinetic sculpture Mnēmē, A Breathing Object), giving it human qualities. Can you speak more about this connection and your inspiration of how people connect to objects?

Mnēmē is a word that describes the effect of the past on the present. That work was my graduation project from the Royal College of Art, where I graduated last summer. This piece was dedicated to my father who passed away almost eight years ago. It was about how we project sensations, memories and experiences onto inanimate objects and bring them to life doing that.

A lot of it was also inspired by reading In Search of Lost Time by [Marcel Proust], there’s a part that [clearly] describes this experience. I always feel like I get attached to objects quite easily. If someone brings me [something], I can’t throw it away easily. I keep it and associate it with memories of that person. It breathes life into the object, becoming a sort of monument forever. In the book, there’s a part where the main character eats a Madeleine. Suddenly, he goes into a stream of memories from his childhood triggered by the smell, touch, and taste of that cookie. I think that you can get that when you find an old shirt, for example, that belonged to someone you cared for, suddenly it brings a lot back to you.

The objects in that installation are all objects that I [used to] create an imagined scene of my father’s room when he was younger. It’s all furniture from the fifties, including the book.

Everything is finely [selected] and symbolizes something. The article the book is opened on is an article about life and death, different theories by different philosophers about how to conceive death in regards to time. We may not know what happens next, but I believe it doesn’t just end when someone passes away.

How do you choose your medium with the work that you do?

I usually think of an idea and then I think of what would be the best medium to share it with the world and communicate it. A lot of times, I see my drawings and collages as sketches for future installations, sculptures, or films. I do them at home on paper or Photoshop, just because these are my immediate resources. I would like to produce more large-scale installations and video works. I like things that immerse you in an experience.

You can view Maayan Sophia Weisstub’s work on her website and Instagram. Check out her upcoming installation at Room25 in Tel Aviv in May 2023.

No Soy El Sol Que Quema: The Sun and Queer Dreaming

No Soy El Sol Que Quema by Andrés Garzon

Good Sport Gallery

August 20th – Sept 3, 2022

By Adi Berardini

No Soy El Sol Que Quema by Andrés Garzon is an exhibition reflecting on religion and internalized homophobia, looking at his role as a brother and a son. Further, it’s a reflection on hiding versus living as your authentic self. Growing up as Jehovah’s Witness in a family that immigrated from Bogotá, Colombia, Garzon’s relationship with religion is a complex one—he felt isolated by the need to hide his true self and the internalized homophobia this created. On the other hand, Andrés explained that the community his family found through Jehovah’s Witness helped him retain his language since the Kingdom Hall he attended and the literature he read was in Spanish. Although it created hurt and divided him, it also created a connection for him and his family to other recent immigrants at the time.

Having a complex relationship with religion is a narrative that many queer people know well. Religion can be like an externalized force, a voice in your head that nags you and tries to convince you that the way you are is somehow inherently “wrong.” An invisible weight that pulls you down. I grew up in an ex-Catholic household—Although my parents aren’t religious, my grandparents were pretty Catholic. Even though it was at a distance, religion and its influence always seemed to have its grasp on me. Enough to want to push my feelings down and repress myself. And I pushed them down further and further. I pushed them down so far that I couldn’t push them down anymore, and they came flooding up. Although to this day, I feel like I’m still chasing the years I lost to denying my feelings and experiences I could never quite reach, at least not solely in my dreams.

Andrés explains how the exhibition is also closely tied to dreams as a form of escape. When he felt he needed to hide himself, he became interested in lucid dreaming and his dreams were like an escape from a reality that often seemed like a nightmare. Andrés is a friend and hearing him say that dreaming was solace from reality was hard to hear. I was upset that someone I care about felt that his dreams were a welcomed escape from reality. But then I realized I’ve been there before, as many other queer people have. The pain and stress of hiding your true self is a weight that no one should bear.

Excerpt from *Mi libro de historias de Amor (My Book of Love Stories)* by Andrés Espitia Garzon. Photo by Abby Vincent, courtesy of the artist.

The accompanying exhibition text Mi libro de historias de Amor (My Book of Love Stories), consists of a mix of former dream logs, poems, and journals from 2015-2021. Its cover references a childhood bible story book, nostalgic for its iconic design and the memories attached to it. The first half is in English, and the second half is in Spanish, translated by his older brother, Diego. One of the texts recounts a time when his mother looked into his eyes and saw nothing—she just wished for him to find a sense of joy.^[1] It made me think back to when I moved from Vancouver and experienced losing the affect in my voice due to an overwhelming sense of dread. I was going through a tough time since I had lost the sense of community that I had before. My mother also realized that something was blocking my happiness. My friendship with Andrés and other relationships in the queer art community here in London eventually alleviated the pain I had felt and brought warmth, much like the sun in Andrés’ paintings and drawings.

*No Soy El Sol Que Quema* by Andrés Garzon at Good Sport Gallery. Photo by Abby Vincent, courtesy of the artist.

Another theme in No Soy El Sol Que Quema is the power of familial love. The imagery of the sun/son is prevalent throughout representing a symbol of safety and home in sunny Colombia and his role as a son. As Andrés explains, the drawing El Hijo Escondido / Hidden Son depicts the hurt that he felt while trying to hide from his family. Andrés explains that in Jehovah’s Witness, being gay is considered shunnable. He feared that by coming out, he would potentially lose the approval of his family that had sacrificed so much for him growing up. The sketch depicts a self-portrait archetype of Andrés curled up, hiding from the world. Conversely, El Hijo Escogido / Chosen Son depicts the figure basking in the sun with joy and fulfillment. When Andrés came out to his family, his family chose him and had left Jehovah’s Witness, their religion for the past 20-so years. As many people in the LGBTQ2S+ community know, there’s also power in chosen family. The drawing celebrates living authentically and the triumph of love over fear and shame.

*No Soy El Sol Que Quema* by Andrés Garzon at Good Sport Gallery. *Loving In The War Years I* and *Loving In The War Years II*. Photo by Abby Vincent, courtesy of the artist.

In Loving In The War Years I two figures are wrestling together with long, dark hair (a signature of Andrés’) and arrows in their legs. The name is a nod to the text of the same name by Mexican feminist Cherrié Moraga, chronicling her coming of age as a lesbian at a time wrought with censorship in Mexico. The arrows are a reference to Saint Sebastian, the shapeshifter of the bible, oscillating from masc to femme depictions in the art historical canon, and one Andrés resonates with. Against the navy blue of night, the figures are reminiscent of Matisse’s La Danse. Andrés says that these figures represent the two archetypes within himself that struggle against one another. The struggle represents the fight toward self-acceptance and the complications of external factors such as religion and the pressure of family acceptance. The painting on the adjacent wall, Loving in the War Years II, depicts the two figures peacefully embracing, with bright yellow stars forming a halo around them, divinely protected. The two paintings also reference night and day—and the stark difference that finding peace and self-acceptance can bring.

Just as the sun can bring warmth, religion and a relationship to God or a higher power can bring peace and comfort. Although just as easily, the sun burns, and religion as an institution has brought pain and toxicity to many. Its force over peoples’ lives has been used as a tool of oppression to gain power (I mean, colonization). No Soy El Sol Que Quema explores finding a relationship with God after leaving organized religion. Personally, tarot has become a spiritual tool that I turn to, engaging with it as a daily ritual.

*El Que Sabe Lo Que Tiene, Sabe Lo Que Debe (Knowing what you owe, is knowing what you have)* detail. Photo by Abby Vincent, courtesy of the artist.

Andrés explains to me how his mother was the family breadwinner before arriving in Canada, while his father kept track of the family finances, and how his parents always made sure food was on the table for him and his siblings. El Que Sabe Lo Que Tiene, Sabe Lo Que Debe (Knowing what you owe, is knowing what you have) consists of bright yellow porcelain coins placed on a plinth, resembling the pentacles of the tarot deck. With permission, I pick them up and they are smooth to the touch, like a rock smoothed from the waves of the ocean. Scattered in between these pentacles are seashells and snail shells, some from nature and some from garage sales. I recognize the golden ratio spiral in a few. Andrés explained that the yellow pentacles are modelled after a pendant given to him by his mother, with the same indent he would often run his fingers over. The pentacles reference the sacrifice his parents gave him and his siblings through their hard work and determination.

After engaging with Andrés’ exhibition No Soy El Sol Que Quema, I think of how queerness itself is sacred. Although it can be painted out as a sin by religion, it’s what has brought me peace and community when I needed it the most. No Soy El Sol Que Quema is a love letter to Andrés’ family and chronicles a journey of self-discovery, with both queerness and spirituality, but on one’s own terms. Andrés’ paintings and drawings are a stark reminder that healing is possible when love is chosen over fear.

[1] Garzon Espitia, Andres. Mi libro de historias de Amor. 2022 . p. 18.

Check out Mi Libro de Historias de Amor (My Book of Love Stories) by Andrés Garzon Espitia. You can also find a digital copy here.

Contaminating states: Sophie Cundale’s The Near Room

South London Gallery

Aug 15- Sept 13, 2020 (Main Gallery)

By Kit Edwards

Arriving at the South London Gallery to see Sophie Cundale’s ‘The Near Room’ last week, I felt already irritated by the return to IRL art. Obviously not the seeing work in the flesh bit, but all the other stuff that comes along with the experience – the pressure to be enriched in some way, all the standing about, the feeling of being watched whilst watching (am I looking in the right way, for the right amount of time?), now delightfully combined with the fear of spreading/catching COVID. But I had truly forgotten how much I liked being out in the world looking at things, and the quiet closeness of the SLG, the dark blanket of the (well distanced) screening room, felt not dissimilar to the isolated space in which I’d been consuming art for the past five months.

Sophie Cundale’s new film ‘The Near Room’ takes its title from Muhammad Ali’s description of the nightmarish space which came to him in the depths of a fight, as described by George Plimpton in his book Shadow Box (1977):

…a door swung half open [into a room of] neon, orange and green lights blinking, bats blowing trumpets and alligators playing trombones, snakes screaming. Weird masks and actors’ clothes hung on the wall, and if he stepped across the sill and reached for them, he knew that he was committing himself to his own destruction.

Inspired by this vivid and strange psychic space, Cundale constructs a similar dichotomy between the life of a boxer and the manifestation of his post-knockout hallucinations. The film begins with a carousel of scenes from a life of constraint, and though we have not yet entered the ring there is something strange on this side of the psyche. The tight choreography of the training boxers gives a sense of the constructed nature of this reality as they pause and begin in perfect unison. Things become increasingly uncanny as the close images that punctuate the boxer’s life swing round again: he wakes, he weighs, he sweats. These repetitions situate the viewer in the disorientation of monotony – have we been here before? How many times has this scene replayed? Groaning audio sways us into a state of anxiety as the boxer’s fears that he may be past his prime are articulated in this impotent cycle of discipline. A sand timer bathed in red light slithers on, and the lip of his opponent begins to curl – almost imperceptibly – into a threat. This first part of the film is tight and affecting in its quickening pace, working to untack the pins of coherence.

The bell rings and the boxers take their places beginning their slow dance. Devotional singing starts up and as their bodies wash over each other, the boxer is knocked unconscious and we enter into the ‘near room’. We are introduced to a queen from times past, and her courtiers who are concerned about her deteriorating mental and physical state. The action that ensues takes on the conventions of melodrama and Greek tragedy: a chorus is recognizable in the two courtiers gossiping between song, the sensationalizing of lust and violence is active in nearly every scene, and there is a sense of catharsis achieved through the enactment of a fantasy so concerned with defilement.

As the boxer deprives himself in pursuit of physical greatness, so the queen of the near room disintegrates, the two strangely connected by the psychic threads of the near room. The queen is afflicted with ‘Cottard Dellusion’—a rare neurological condition in which the sufferer believes themselves or part of their body to be decaying or already dead—but she nevertheless remains the far more tangible protagonist. Brilliantly played by artist and poet Penny Goring, the queen maintains a chaotic sense of erotic potency over the other characters. Lipsticked and filthy, she cackles wildly whilst abusing and seducing her courtiers. The notion that she must be diseased and deluded to believe her body is decaying becomes less convincing as she hovers over the lifeless body of her son (once the boxer, now the prince) and a parallel between their mental states becomes apparent. The queen is aware of our fleshy precarity and so lives voraciously, whereas the boxer/prince lives in denial of his vulnerable and changing humanity and so lives in a relative un-world of discipline. She stands above him, symbolic of the threat of all he guards against.

This tethering of reality and the near room to the mother/child dynamic between the boxer and the queen enacts elements of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection as outlined in her essay “From Filth to Defilement.”^[1] Kristeva explains the occurrence of abjection as the process by which our perception of the world first splits in two. The first object we encounter in infancy is the mother (the model for all proceeding ‘others’) which we must ultimately ‘abject’ or cast out in order to realize ourselves as distinct. The abject is the horror that exists in the liminal space of the in-between—between self and object, our internal and external worlds. This process according to Kristeva is the impetus behind the incest taboo which veils the threat of the loss of the self across the ultimate boundary of life and death, and prevents the temptation to enter into the murky waters of liminality where one might ‘find death, along with nirvana.’[2] This process of abjection is enacted in the film through the blurring of boundaries between previously distinct realms (psychic/physical, self/other, reality/fantasy, desire/disgust) which works to expose their closeness and the inescapable reality of being as a state of flux.

Consumption and excretion are recurring features of the near room in contrast with the boxer’s abjection of all indulgence. In one playful scene, the queen’s advisor is seduced by the revelation of her filthy feet and writhes in pleasure on her lap before she pulls out a dagger and slits his throat – blood gushing in place of ejaculation. The drinking of urine features a number of times in the near room referring to uroscopy, a medieval medical practice used to assess health. The queen, cognizant of her internal rot, seems to revel in this realm of the abject.

One aspect of the film that I was unsure of was the use of sound. From the moment we enter the near room out-of-sync audio is layered over each scene. Initially the effect made me think of the moment between dreaming and consciousness when real but distant sounds (an alarm, the tv, a loved one’s voice) become enveloped in the dream space, bending in and out of sense. The video/audio can never quite sync and the more you strain to cohere it, the more it is lost. As it continued however, I began to recognize the repetitive nature of this layering, that the audio of the following scene was simply layered over the present one in a way that made the process transparent and wearisome. I think a more playful and varied layering of voice and sound would have worked better to disrupt a chronological narrative, aligning with the film’s concern with flux.

Still though, the visuals are consistently strong, implicating the viewer in the strange delight achieved through the corruption of opposing sensibilities. In the final scene the boxer looks on at his slippery reality, bathed in deep blue light. We can’t unsee the chaos of the near room, can’t shake the sense that this is the unreal space where movements appear nauseatingly rehearsed. The two realms, though separate, touch each other and therefore contaminate. The film constructs a space in which the precarious nature of our fleshy and psychic realities is exposed, and we are invited to slip deep into a playful world of polluted borders where the fear of destruction is not so far from the realization of pleasure.

The Near Room is commissioned and produced by Film and Video Umbrella with support from Arts Council England, South London Gallery, Bonington Gallery, Curator Space and The Gane Trust3 and is available (for free) at the South London Gallery until 13th September 2020.

The film will also be on display at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham
December 2020 – February 2021

^[1] Julia Kristeva, “From Filth to Defilement” in Powers of horror: an essay on abjection, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982)

[2] Kristeva, p.64