For this particular show, the artists thought to make an overview of their curatorial practice being both women, single mothers, artists and curators, but being form a different background and country of origin. Art & Soup by 2 artists and curators Nia Pushkarova (BG) and Cathrine Constanse Gjelsnes (NO)
Friday, 1st of April from 7pm – open end at Schillerpalais
Schillerpromenade 4, 12049 Berlin-Neukölln
While preparing food at the presentation in an informal way, they will present their practice as artists and curators, eat and use plates with printed drawings of Nia.
Nia Pushkarova
During the years I have got to the point of extending my practice as an artist into making an artist run initiative in order to make a platform for communication through the arts. The festival I am running now for 10 years is called Water tower art fest. I see myself as a mediator of the western culture and eastern in a way, dealing with art helps me situate myself better in the everyday life being in Bulgaria or elsewhere. The questions of feminine expression are an important one for me and I do explore it in my paintings and videos. Another topic of mine is the sharing – experience, ideas and memories. So in the recent years in my art I incorporated performance and life situation as a main inspiration to the work I am doing with different mediums- painting, photography and video.
Cathrine Constanse Gjelsnes
My artistic practise have had the main focus on the relational aesthetics, installation, performance and objects. The themes manly women life and the typical work areas and actions in a wider sense. I have staged myself: As laundry worker in Berlin, housewife in Stuttgart, toilet guard in Stavanger, taste tester-woman at the Historical museum, failing role Modell in the local community, aid worker in Africa, a considered lady in Oslo, cavewoman at the End of the World, and decadent bating nymph in Krakow, Sofia and Oslo. The audience have seen me doing different actions as if it were in a live museum, kind of a quasi-ethnological freak show where the main agenda is to show women´s trivial and existential needs.
My new character Fru. Felgen is an aging dame who find her own ways, in many ways she sums up my earlier work. In addition to my art I have run non-profit-galleries and worked as a curator. Curator comes from the Latin word cura that means care. So, this curating-work requires in many ways the same qualities and skills as a good old fashion housewife.
I will talk about my journey as an artist from the very beginning of my career, when I was a wash laundry worker in Gallery Wohnmachine in Berlin in 1995. And who knows, maybe Fru. Fuelgen shows up …
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