GALERIE
KOAL Germany | Berlin
APRIL 27,
2017-JUNE 10, 2017 Save to calendar
Jeanno
Gaussi: Imaginary Friends - Galerie Koal
To Jeanno
Gaussi, home means work. She has to make the places where she lands her own.
Tame the things that she encounters. The artist fled Kabul with relatives at
the age of four; she only saw her mother again years later in Delhi. Gaussi
dealt with the loneliness, the isolation and the unalterable conditions that
shaped her childhood by creating a complex imaginary world. A tree in a park
and a human skeleton model in a chaotic flat became beloved friends; things
carelessly thrown away were collected as precious treasures.
In
Imaginary Friends Gaussi alludes to her ability to conjure up elements of home
in the unfamiliar. When the artist moved from Berlin to San Francisco she was
again confronted with feelings of foreignness and invisibility. So she created
a series of figures with objects and materials that she found on the streets of
Bayview and the neighbouring Mission district, now on show as a whole for the
first time.
In earlier
works like Dreams on Wheels (2015) Gaussi explored traditional artisanal
techniques from India and Afghanistan in order to give expression to her search
for identity and its related social and cultural processes. For Imaginary
Friends she learnt the weaving technique macramé. Originally hailing from North
Africa, macrame was extremely popular in the hippie era and is currently
experiencing a renaissance in California amongst many other places.
Gaussi’s
meticulous needlework results in very personal objects that can appear touching,
tragic or humorous depending on the angle. The works do not only refer to the
migrant experience, however; Gaussi’s figures can also be read as a comment on
the search for meaning within affluent societies, showing that it is only by
engaging with things that they gain value.
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