„“ Ebtisam AbdulAziz & Eva Weingärtner
Ebtisam AbdulAziz & Eva Weingärtner
21/07/2023
6 –10pm
The exhibition will be accompanied by a text by Frankfurt-based philosopher Angelica Horn. Scroll down.
Art historian Britta Kadolsky gave a speech at the opening ceremony. Scroll down.
Ebtisam AbdulAziz writes about the video performance:
A safe person to approach 2018
I want to bring attention to the #safetypin movement which uses the safety pin as a symbol of tolerance and solidarity. These safety pins are worn in public by those who wish to identify themselves as allies to members of the community who feel marginalized and vulnerable. This symbol aims to champion a shared respect for all religions, nationalities, and genders. The performance extends this discourse by asking the viewer to consider what more could be done to stand in solidarity with those at risk.
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If you wear a hijab, I’ll sit with you on the train.
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If you are a person of color, Muslim, refugee, immigrants, women or member of the L. G. B. T. community.
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If you need me, I’ll be with you. All I ask is that you be with me, too.
Eva Weingärtner writes about the live performance:
Respect My Bounderies
The performance is not about showing how things turn out when they are at their worst. The performance is about the point when things start to get too far. It is about when there is still time to act, empower, and change the situation.
About the artists:
Ebtisam AbdulAziz is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. She explores issues of identity and culture through installation, performance, mixed-media, painting and works on paper. Combining the scientific with the arbitrary, AbdulAziz draws from her training in science and mathematics, methodically exploring subconscious states and the expansiveness of daily life. She creates codes, systematic structures, graphic language, and performative gestures to force viewers to question their assumptions about rules in the natural and formulaic world. The intimate juxtapositions of these concepts center awareness on our surrounding environment and the issues that perplex and shape us. Ebtisam lives and works in Dubai and Washington, D.C. .
Eva Weingärtner´s work is directly connected to her person, her emotions, her relationship with nature, and places of belonging. In Eva´s videos and performances, she captures a particular state of mind and invites viewers to identify with her self-confrontations. Since 2019, she has been working with a life-sized doll, her double, creating photo documentation and abstract drawings that are integrated into new videos and installations. Eva lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.
Pictures from right to left:
Installation View
Ebtisam AbdulAziz:
A safe person to approach 2018, 400 safety Pins, performance, video 7:51
video still: 5:10
video still: 6:18
video still: 1:43
Eva Weingärtner
No Title: Buntstift auf getöntem Papier, 29,7 x 42 cm
Installation View
No Title: Buntstift auf Papier, 29,7 x 42 cm
Respect My Bounderies, Live Performance
Respect my boundaries!
Ebtisam AbdulAziz and Eva Weingärtner in the series "" of the Studiospaces Lange Straße 31.
On this evening of the last one-evening exhibition of the series "", Eva Weingärtner performed: she stood and cut a rectangle out of her T-shirt with a pair of scissors, on which was a printed motif of her drawing work. A kind of window was created that revealed the view of the body, framed by the remnants of the T-shirt and the dark blazer, as well as by red tapes that were placed horizontally and vertically on the body and served as orientation while cutting with the scissors, so that the red first became visible in the resulting gap.
Vertically from top to bottom on the body (where the sternum lies) was the word RESPECT, below it horizontally in two lines the words MY and BOUNDARIES. After the text was presented in an upright standing position, the discarded T-shirt piece was picked up again and reattached with safety pins in such a way that the statement of one's own artistic motif now came to lie on the side facing the body and the red remained visible on all sides through the gaps that remained during this attachment.
The artist positioned herself in her standing with the expression of serious composure. The performance ended with a smile from her. The limits of the subject are first of all the limits of one's own body, the inviolability of the body by others, but furthermore also the other limits of the human being, such as those of a mental and spiritual nature. It is about the integrity of the human subject, about his dignity.The whole of this perfomance is a statement asserted in title and writing. The act itself violates the clothing that serves to protect the body in order to expose it and the writing. The "repair" turns one's artistry to the interior, so that the symbolic injury is only conditionally removed. Conversely, the original positioning would also only offer the appearance of a restoration. It is a dialectical relationship.
This actual performance is juxtaposed in the exhibition with a video performance by Ebtisam AbdulAziz, who has emerged as a painter with brightly colored paintings of spatial illusionarity, where, for example, colored surfaces create the illusion of cubes built on top of or next to each other, which suddenly seem to be constructed quite differently in an optical reversal effect. Here now we see the video "A safe person to approach" from 2018. A lying woman in a black garment, the artist herself, attaches relatively large safety pins in a serial structure in her garment, so that it is gradually completely covered with safety pins. In the reclining position it is difficult to keep track, and yet an order in rows emerges. The hands that we see attaching the needles remain unharmed. The reclining woman is surrounded by a band of safety pins.
The title of the action refers to the historical context associated with it, which is explained in the Internet publication of the video by an accompanying text. It is about the safety pin movement, where the wearers of a safety pin on their own clothing confess that they are ready to stand by or will stand by another person in need, in situations of violence or threat of violence. The threatened person can turn to such a person with a safety pin, for example during a bus ride, and trust (hopefully) that this person will then also help, protect and support. The safety pin stands as a symbol of the safety that the person wearing it is willing to provide to others.
While the action of Eva Weingärtner's performance contains its meaning entirely within itself, the narrative of Ebtisam AbdulAziz's video refers to the additional information about the safety pin movement, which as such does not result from the formal event. With the context, the gradual equipping of the whole garment with safety pins means the constant repetition of an action that, in the real life of this movement, takes place only once, which could be interpreted in the sense of urgency. The viewer may be inspired to join the safety pin movement himself. The narrative of the video nevertheless has an independence from this meaning of its contextualization. It shows a concentrated form of a person's self-circumstance, a self-reflexive and calm persistence, a self-confident self-determination. The formally abstract action, as it also takes place in the artist's painting, has at the same time something content-free about it and is convincing in its formal precision. Thus, in this one-evening exhibition, real statement performance and self-reflexive narrative in a historical context confront each other asymmetrically, complementing and responding to each other.
Eva Weingärtner, who also works as a logotherapist for people with existential concerns, addresses her own existential questions in her performances. Existential questions are those of the subject's own self-assurance in his own history and the history of his parents, his country, his life reality. Now Eva Weingärtner has found a way in her drawing work that could be described as "growing and shaping". The one-evening exhibition shows four sheets of her hand, pencil drawings that she makes on free evenings, where forms simply grow and this growth can be watched, as it were, without solid and defined figures emerging again. The result is colorful structures of vegatable or organic appearance, intertwinings that lead or drift on themselves, reinforcing shadings, thread-like connections and much more. The growing is a free forming out of the own individuality and constitutes in it the own freedom.
Angelica Horn
© Frankfurt am Main 2023
Two-Person Exhibition
Speech by Britta Kadolsky
Ebtisam AbdulAziz & Eva Weingärtner on Friday, July 21, from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM at STUDIOSPACE Lange Strasse 31, Frankfurt.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear all, let me extend a warm welcome to each and every one of you.
The intended purpose of the safety pin was to allow pieces of fabric to be tied together. A frequently used application of the safety pin was to secure cloth nappies. At the same time, the safety pin was often used to fix torn clothing. Safety pins were also used in first aid to secure plasters and bandages. Furthermore, the pins were also worn in punk culture as costume jewelry.
what else is it all about? I'll come to that later.
First of all, I would like to classify the art of Ebtisan Abdullaziz and Eva Weingärtner, which we can see here today, in terms of art history: namely in Performance art - Action art - Feminist art – that is the art historical context.
All these art movements originated in the 1960s. As a reaction to abstract expressionism and art informel.
The intention was for art to take place in specific space and time dimensions. That is the character of action art.
Art is no longer a commodity in the art market or an object in the museum. Instead, the boundaries between art and life were meant to be blurred – to disappear.
Often, this artistic expression was accompanied by societal taboos, leading to a shocked public.
However, action art was replaced by the so-called happening in the 1970s, a more moderate performances art. In contemporary art this has now become an established medium
Furthermore, in both of these artistic positions we can see today, we witness feminist art. This term also emerged in the 1960s and was linked to the women's movement.
It deals with themes such as
-female identity,
-embodiment,
-sexual violence,
-personal experiences,
-power dynamics,
-and conventional gender constructs and norms.
Allow me to briefly mention three significant female performance artists:
Yoko Ono, who was also part of the Fluxus movement, attracted a lot of attention with her performance Cut Piece in 1964.
Marina Abramovic, in her 1974 performance Rhythem 0, took up these structures again 10 years later.
And the Austrian action artist Valie Export reflected gender stereotypes in a particularly strongly way with her Tap and Touch Cinema (Tapp-und Tast-Kino) in 1968.
All performances were about the (mostly male) audience interacting with an unflinchingly passive female body. To make clear that assigned gender roles are subordinate to existing power relations.
In Performance Art, Action Art, and Feminist Art, as we witness here, the artists make their own bodies the material of their art.
is there a difference in the reflection of one's own female body in East and West? We will see…..
Ebtisam AbdulAziz is a multidisciplinary artist and writer from the United Arab Emirates. She lives and works in Dubai and Washington, D.C..
She explores issues of identity and culture through.
-installation,
-performance,
-mixed media,
-painting
-and works on paper.
Combining the scientific with the arbitrary,
AbdulAziz studied maths and science.
She explores daily life in a methodical way.
She creates codes, systematic structures, a graphic language and performative gestures,
forcing the viewer to question their assumptions about rules in their world.
The film 400 Safety Pins - A safe person to approach, which we were able to see in that room, is also an intimate juxtaposition, drawing awareness to issues that trouble us and provoking reflection.
In the film we see the artist in black clothing lying on the white floor. Next to her is a pile of safety pins. She picks up one pin after the other and attaches them to her dress, to her sleeves, to her headscarf, to her scarf.... Sometimes I think: she's about to prick her finger, but she never gets hurt.
At the end, she decides to put back the safety pin she had picked up earlier. Why? Because she made it clear what she meant: Solidarity.
Today, there is a safety pin movement.
A safety pin shows support for the vulnerable, stands for solidarity with people of color, with women, with people with disabilities and with LGBTQI. It is a sign against sexism and Islamophobia.
it is meant to symbolize that all people are in the same boat. A safety pin is a sign against discrimination.
In this exhibition, the two artists, Ebtisan Abdullaziz and Eva Weingärtner, are presenting their works together. It is a dialogue of Art pieces.
And, as per Caro's information for preparing my speech, I have heard, that through an intense dialogue, which took place in numerous online meetings, these two women, these two artists shared their art, emotions, experiences, thoughts and reflections on women's bodies.
They exchanged ideas and collaborated, leading to a mutual influence and development, culminating in the art you see before you today.
Eva Weingärtner's work is directly connected to her person, her emotions, her relationship with nature, and places of belonging. Eva lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.
Eva Weingärtner's colored pencil drawings show organic forms. It is important to her to make visible what she feels.
She creates filigree drawings that look like internal organs. Fine lines suggest blood vessels or veins and cell structures. Oval shapes are reminiscent of the egg. All the shapes within an entity are somehow interconnected.
The drawings have a lot of space around them and this free space stands for the space that we should allow every other human being to have.
and may have ourselves.
It is also about boundaries that should be respected and accepted. An inner process becomes a picture, a drawing.
In Eva's videos and performances, she captures a particular state of mind and invites viewers to identify with her self-confrontation. Since 2019, she has been working with a life-sized doll, her double, creating photo documentation and abstract drawings that are integrated into new videos and spatial installations.
Ebtisan and Eva exchanged ideas and worked together, leading to a development that culminated in the art you see later.
we are going to see a live performance by Eva, which I am very much looking forward to. I am not allowed to say much about it yet, because we should all get involved in what we are going to see.
Only this much: Eva references the safety pin.
The last thing I want to mention is: the performance will be filmed and then uploaded to Instagram. so the art we are about to see will become another public performance. Ebtisam will also publish this on her account, quoting Eva’s art.
And we can discuss afterwards, if there is a difference in the reflection of one's own female body in the East and the West
Thank you all for your patience.
About the exhibition series:
In 2023 STUDIOSPACE Lange Strasse 31 is showing three dialogue-based short-term exhibitions. These exhibitions are subsequent to the exhibitions in 2022, 2020/21 and 2016/17.
In the exhibition series „“ , two artists jointly present their works for an evening. Sometimes harmonious, sometimes controversial, this encounter format invites dialogue. A theoretical approach of the exhibition by a third person complements this format and will be published afterwards.
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