February 12–26. Post-Post: Queer Caucasus. Curated by Giorgi Rodinov

Post-Post: Queer Caucasus. Curated by Giorgi Rodinov
Exhibition: February 12–26, Th, Fr & Sa 14:00-18:00 (except Feb 12)
Commencement: Saturday, February 12, 19:00-21:00
Online Discussion: Friday, February 18, 19:00 Berlin/CET (use this link to join)

What happens when empires collapse? What happens to all the plans and utopias? To the legends that are carried as a burden through generations of nations?

This year it is exactly three decades since the Soviet Union collapsed and its regions were granted the weight of independence. Since then, the South Caucasus has been going through an immense political and social mutation. Chaotic attempts to plan the future without any means to it doomed losses, poverty, and conflicts. To this day people of the post-soviet world carry this trauma.

Queer children of this mutation period were left marginalized by the system. To this day, they have to hide their real identities from the public. However, with the advent of informational progress, new realities and scenes became available for their self-expression.

Post-Post showcases young queer artists from Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku and Sukhumi. It gives them a safe space to reflect on what the South Caucasus is now, 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

An online discussion with the artists, moderated by Giorgi Rodionov, will take place Friday, February 18 at 19:00 Berlin/CET. Use this link to join: https://meet.jit.si/TheInstituteForEndoticResearch

Hygiene concept: 2G-Plus. Be vaccinated or recovered, with a negative test from the same day or after your booster jab, with a valid EU Digital COVID Certificate presented in the CovPass or Corona-Warn app (if printed, it must include a valid QR code). Please remember to bring your FFP2 mask and wear it at all times inside the space.

David Apakidze is a visual artist, curator and art researcher. They graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts with a BA in Art History and Theory. They co-created Fungus Project, a Caucasia-based queer art platform. In their research, they explore themselves through the lens of contemporary culture.

Salina Abaza was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1986. She is a graphic designer and interdisciplinary artist based in Sukhumi, Abkhazia.
Salina’s works are driven by her interest in personal narratives and their relationship to larger socio-political frameworks. She questions personal and political depths by looking at such concepts as identity, memory, violence and authority.
With this abstract and vast interest came diversified practice. She allows the concept to dictate the method, so her work acquires different mediums: from graphic design, videography and drawing to interdisciplinary performance, sculpture and installation. In the past two years she has taken interest in using creative coding platforms for art.

Nailə Dadaş-zadə & Ani Paitjan
Naila is a visual artist who works with different types of mediums including photography, video, installation, and archival materials. She was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1998, but lived in different places. Her works consider such topics as space, time, and our relations to it, as well as identity in today’s world and activism through artistic expression.
Ani studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and has a Master Degree in Journalism. After working with multiple Belgian media outlets (press and radio), she moved to Armenia.

Vusala Hajiyeva is a Baku based poet, musician and filmmaker. She writes poetry on queer themes and social issues, composes music in neoclassical and indie styles. She made a documentary “Noise Symphony” and is working on a new script which is a self-portrait.

Giorgi Rodionov, born in 1990, is a Tbilisi-based artist and a curator focused on social and political stories that change eras.
Having grown up in a post-Soviet country, his interest in social structures and identities grew a lot. After graduating in journalism in one of the universities in the capital of Georgia, he moved to Europe and continued studies in contemporary arts for his MA.
Most of Giorgi’s works are based on his researches that are later transformed into installation, performance, participative art, books or other different media. As for the journalistic practice, he is very much interested in bringing science, art and the rest of the society together to deal with the issues as a joint power.
His artistic activity list includes many exhibitions in different European countries and Georgia, as well as personal projects published in different media. Giorgi lives and works in Tbilisi where he founded an art space called “Untitled Gallery Tbilisi”, which aims to bring artists from South Caucasus together to talk about social and political issues in the region.

  October 8 – December 1. Somatic Charting. The House is the Body

Series of performative encounters:
Somatic Charting. The House is the Body

October 8 – December 1, 2021
Curated by: Elena Basteri and TIER (Lorenzo Sandoval & Benjamin Busch)
With: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva, Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir, Island Songs (Silvia Ploner & Nicolas Perret) with César E. Giraldo Herrera, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Susan Ploetz, Luiza Prado de O. Martins, Isabelle Schad, Melanie Jame Wolf, and Sergio Zevallos
In cooperation with: Freie Universität Berlin – Institut für Tanzwissenschaft, and Tanzhalle Wiesenburg
Venues: Tanzhalle Wiesenburg, Wiesenstraße 55, 13357 Berlin-Wedding, and The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER), Donaustraße 84, 12043 Berlin-Neukölln

Somatic Charting. The House is the Body is a transdisciplinary project initiated by The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER) and dance curator Elena Basteri, which presents a series of performative encounters and workshops around the theme of somatics. The aim is to trace a cartography of contemporary artistic practices from choreography, performance, visual and sound art, in which the soma (the body perceived from within through self-perception) plays a central role.
Can organs, tissue, cells and bones be triggers of movement, sensing, affect, healing processes and empowerment? Can we (re)appropriate and make experiential knowledge of those parts of the body that remain hidden and ungraspable, thus challenging what Foucault called “the medical gaze”?
The invited artists will explore the potential of somatics in our present, from heterogeneous and multiple perspectives, and make references to issues related to migration, post-colonialism, gender and ecology. The series is inspired by the idea of a studio visit and proposes formats that combine practice, theory and aesthetic experience.

All events are free of charge. Limited places are available. Registration is required for most (see below): somaticcharting@gmail.com
For the workshop of Sergio Zevallos, register at: lecodeblanc@protonmail.com
Please observe the current COVID-19 regulations in Berlin. At time of release, participation is possible following the “3G” (vaccinated, recovered or tested) and “AHA” (distance, hygiene and mask) rules in Germany.

–> Download the full schedule and press release here

–> View photos from the encounters

Supported by:

  September 4 – October 2: Junko Maruyama: Diving in through the Wall

Exhibition:
Junko Maruyama: Diving in through the Wall
September 4 – October 2, Th, Fr & Sa 14:00-18:00 (except Sep 4)
Commencement: Saturday, September 4, 19:00-21:00

Body moves. Weather shifts. I go with the flow and leave the traces.
I made soap from used oil collected from various restaurants, the leftover which once supported our lives. I drew a picture outside with it. The rain washed it away. I drew again. With the process, I tried to capture the dialogs between material and environment, functionality and non-functionality, permanence and impermanence.

Some scientists say if human creates a life-form, it would begin with a piece of soap.  I made creatures with the soap I made. They are sculpture-like, and yet drawing-like, holding various traces—of gaining forms, of evolution that is yet to see. I call them “Manonamanamono”. The name suggests something raw and ephemeral, created or emerged at the time at the place. Between the traces, I see a dialog of organic and inorganic matter.

I move with soap and leave the traces.

Born in Japan, Junko Maruyama currently lives and works in Berlin. Having studied sculpture in the City University of New York, Hunter Collage, the artist works across various medias such as drawing, sculpture, installation, performance and animation. Her works examines the notions of circulation and rebirth, often recycled materials, in particular fluid and variable materials such as ice cream, plastics and soap. By circulating the different states of matters of materials, the artist explores the existence and non-existence of the borders in between.
She has shown her works in various exhibitions such as Alive and (Gallery Paris, Yokohama) 2021; A Story Begins from Flowers and the Sea (Kodomo Museum, Chiba) 2020; Bunkamura Gallery Selection (Bunkamura Gallery, Tokyo) 2019; Re: (F1969, Busan) 2018; Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale (Hoshitouge, Niigata) 2015, 2006; 5 rooms (Kanagawa prefectural Hall Gallery, Kanagawa) 2016, among many. Her notable awards and achievements include Free Art Free Semi-Grand Prix, Charitable Trust Oki Memorial Artist Grant, Taipei/Yokohama Artist Exchange Program Judge Special Award, Asahi Shimbun Cultural Foundation Grant, and Arts and Culture grant from Nomura Foundation.
She is currently working at Künstlerhaus Bethanien for international residency program, with the support by Overseas Study Program for Artists Fellow, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.

Titled Maintenance! Domestics as Institutional Becomings, acknowledging the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, our series of solo exhibitions and online events for the next months will address the domestic from different vantage points related to institution-making. We are preparing a reader on the topic that will be launched soon as well. During this new program of exhibitions, the previous interventions will remain at TIER. In that way we’ll keep working on the space as an editorial device to be renegotiated, and an ecology of artworks, underlining its conception as an inner garden based on principles of cultivation.

Photos by Benjamin Busch

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