Tarik Kiswanson presents an set up of recent work within the Nice Corridor. Types of rootlessness, regeneration and renewal are mixed on this undertaking by means of poetic sculptural and architectural gestures, the place we see post-war histories eliding with contemporaneous expertise. Born in Halmstad, Sweden in 1986 the place his household exiled from Palestine, Kiswanson’s follow has been described as evincing a poetics of métissage: a way of writing and surviving between a number of circumstances and contexts. His broad creative follow acts as a cosmology of associated conceptual households, every exploring variations on themes like refraction, multiplication, disintegration, levitation, hybridity, and polyphony by means of their very own distinct language.

The concept of transformation is central to the oeuvre of Tarik Kiswanson. That’s, we see embodied in his sculptural follow concepts of displacement and metamorphosis, alteration and alter, introduced statically in type however evoking transformation in its essence. In Tarik’s earlier work, this was usually by means of the prism of migration. To at the present time, there stays an echo of this private expertise. His earlier work would usually make reference to his household archives and household histories, selecting up the items of what was misplaced within the household’s displacement, and remarking on how reminiscence itself fades together with the challenges in encountering a brand new life and residential. This more moderen work on this exhibition, nevertheless, strikes into extra common concepts of transformation, the place Tarik additionally makes reference to post-war reconstruction throughout Europe, and combines them with concepts of transformation as they seem in nature.

The cocoon sculptures themselves naturally come up out of the artist’s fascination with the transformation of a caterpillar right into a butterfly, which he parallels in bodily type with notions of diaspora, development, entropy and changing into. A sliding signifier between egg and seed and life and start and dying can be evident in these works. These works first emerged out of drawings by the artist, then ultimately had been formed into sculptures primarily based on the artist’s personal physique and scale. This could possibly be seen as a sort of mirroring of physique, emotion and expertise for starters. They seem like pods on partitions, echoing science fiction narratives for one, and geopolitical realities as nicely. The works have develop into bigger, extra monumental and extra gregarious of their interaction with structure—as if a being has planted a cocoon onto the gallery partitions. As a substitute of evoking an concept of one thing magical, the artist as a substitute sees the obvious levitation of those works as a central motif evincing rootlessness—as if one floats barely above and away from the world at giant, when one is uprooted from one’s homeland and cultural identification. Right here we encounter a way of hovering simply barely away from the world, a bit inside, a bit with out. These cocoons thus dangle auspiciously from ceilings, seem in corners, and right here in a single case is wedged collectively curiously with a chair.

The artist has lately researched postwar reconstruction, particularly in France, Germany and in addition to in Austria, with one focus of his analysis being postwar furnishings. Named mobilier sinister or mobilier de la reconstruction in France, this chair is one instance of such mass-produced furnishings and furnishings created for the final populace; elegant, easy, pragmatic and common. It’s thus such a coincidence that these chairs are within the director’s workplace of the Salzburger Kunstverein, one in all which I sat upon for the 9 years main as much as this exhibition. Unknown to me all these years is that these chairs had been usual en masse as a part of the final sweep throughout Europe to reconstruct society after the disaster of World Struggle Two. The artist brings these chairs into his work, pulling this timeline into focus and into play along with his issues and expertise of up to date migration, flight and the trials and endlessness of resettling. Whereas society was getting ready to full collapse after the struggle, governments, architects and designers pulled collectively to encourage a societal rebuild. The artist is vastly impressed by these histories, and merges them along with his work.

Along with the thought of transformation, notions of what comes after an occasion of observe, right here come into focus in Tarik Kiswanson’s exhibition. The artist is nicely conscious of different artists working from a diasporic place whose work evinces trauma and the necessity for restore as a trope showing usually on this work. In 2017 for instance, on this identical gallery area, we introduced a wall sculpture by Kader Attia within the exhibition “Invisible Violence,” which I co-curated with European companions. This exhibition touched upon lots of the themes evident on this present exhibition, and this art work particularly—a damaged mirror sewn collectively once more with wire—fantastically illustrated this notion of restore after the violent fragmentation of self and society. Tarik’s work explores and evinces these realities as nicely and in addition strikes past this depiction of restore to as a substitute assert metamorphosis and transformation—a doubtlessly liberatory reasonably than melancholic or traumatized expression. Naturally Tarik being in his thirties is from a youthful era, and thus takes on these common and fixed matters from a unique time and place. He’s reasonably extra involved about how one strikes on from traumatic histories, enabling a metamorphosis to occur whereas embracing the previous and acknowledging his dad and mom’ trauma. The scars and wounds stay from one era to the following, nevertheless they’re fused with the current making a ripple in actuality, an instability in type as we see all through this work. This can be a trembling, palpitating identification, unfixed because the concepts of Edouard Glissant’s recommend, fixed metamorphosis. Tarik additionally employs a mirror on this exhibition, however there are not any cracks to be repaired, reasonably a deformation of the seen, a recasting of self and being that continues and isn’t full.

In earlier work, Tarik had sculptures of polished metal that created a mirror impact, reflecting all the things surrounding them. The sculptures thus absorbed the structure and different objects or artworks round them, and had been in fixed activation when encountered by individuals particularly. These works had been aesthetically and conceptually malleable, shifting from one constellation of which means to a different, by no means steady, as totally different guests or settings accomplished them, albeit for a couple of moments. His formal issues have shifted extra lately, the place he sees his work extra akin to a threshold that reveals hybrid concepts of timelessness and the ephemeral as they work together with altering identification and future society. His consciousness and remarking upon of traumatic histories—whether or not more moderen or present—underlines this work powerfully, harkening beneath the floor of the cocoons for instance. His deeply embodied hyperlink to his Palestinian background and all that implies stays in these works, a mixed sense of rootlessness and being and changing into between a number of nations (Sweden, France, Palestine) and 5 languages. That is nevertheless shared throughout extra common histories and experiences inside the exhibition altogether because the works work together with each other. His private narrative of hybridity, displacement, longing and shifting identification has merged powerfully with a want to discover and replicate collective human situation. Right here underlying this impulse are many potentialities, together with hopeful tendencies for rebirth, transformation and even liberation out of trauma, displacement and rootlessness. The house-shaped gap palpable in Tarik Kiswanson’s work stays, however Tarik can be within the “put up” of issues. He likewise acknowledges totally different passages of historical past and is extremely conscious of geopolitical disaster because it impacts numerous individuals’s lives. That is, partially, emerged initially as a present from his dad and mom, in that what they straight skilled now seems and re-appears in lots of kinds within the artist’s works as they unfold and interact with an enormous spectrum of human expertise and chance.

—Séamus Kealy

at Salzburger Kunstverein
till September 10, 2023