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It’s that place we turn to, where we seek warmth and protection. This island to rest and retreat from crisis.

It is home.

A place – but also a feeling – of personal identity. This one place we originate from, but which we may have left behind or only just found after a long search. Or perhaps still hoping to find.

As individual as our home(s) may be, as diverse are the scenarios that make it a fragile entity whose continued existence we cannot be sure of. For the exhibition series THE FRAGILITY OF HOME, we have invited four artists to explore this fragility and the associated fractures and tensions in their individual artistic positions, each of which will be on display for four weeks at the CO³.

The presented works encompasses many perspectives: the individual, biographical view, when the home is disrupted by personal strokes of fate such as loss or domestic violence. Or by social factors such as gentrification and lack of affordable housing. There are also political causes of flight, such as persecution, oppression and war. And last but not least, nature, with its changing living conditions, takes its place in the artistic dialogue.

With our choice of artists, whose works deal with both political-global processes and personal-biographical backgrounds, we are pleased to be able to offer our audience new perspectives, to make new positions tangible and ultimately to offer impulses for new, individual perspectives.

LINDA
NADJI

layers,
lines &
repetitions

Opening:

Saturday 20.4.2024 from 6 pm

21. April – 18. May 2024
Wednesdays 16 – 19 pm
Saturdays 15 – 18 pm, or by appointment (info@co3art.com)

More Information
Exhibition Gallery

To kick off the “Fragility of home” series, artist Linda Nadji metaphorically and constructively intervenes in the exhibition space of CO³.

Exploring the dimensions of the venue, she creates scenarios based on the human body as the most primal form of home, reflecting themes of being and positioning.
The unusual interaction of healing earth from the ice-age sedimentary rock loess on the one hand and common building materials as well as textiles marked by traces of life on the other makes Nadji’s works oscillate between stability and fragility. As viewers, we are drawn into questions of home, identity, intimacy and solidarity.

About the artist:
Linda Nadji’s artistic practice is at the intersection of sculptural work, installation and performance. In site-specific works, Nadji takes on given situations and intervenes in them through sometimes marginal transformations. She creates new spatial images that direct the gaze away from a causal function and towards form and material, thus opening up new perspectives on the familiar.
(www.lindanadji.com)

The HOME series of works offers lush, dreamlike settings that show spaces left behind by humans. The photographs reveal the power of nature to consume and conquer a home. The artist comments on the HOME series: ” When I talk about war in my work, it refers to war in the world and also to my memories of war in my childhood. My most recent works are not only a personal exploration of nature, but also of the question of how nature can be political. What happens to the environment when people are displaced or destroyed by war? People are transient, but nature is a constant, unchanging entity. Nature will still be there when we are long gone.”

About the artist:
In her photographic work, Dashti makes references to history and contemporary culture. With a unique, almost theatrical aesthetic, she connects diverse cultural experiences and deepens her perception of the world around her.
www.gohardashti.com

GOHAR
DASHTI

HOME

Opening:

Saturday 8.6.2024 from 18 pm

9. June – 6. July 2024
Wednesdays 16 – 19 pm
Saturdays 15 – 18 pm, or by appointment (info@co3art.com)

NADYA
SAYAPINA

LETTER TO MOM

Opening:

Saturday 31.8.2024 from 18 pm

1. – 28. September 2024
Wednesdays 16 – 19 pm
Saturdays 15 – 18 pm, or by appointment (info@co3art.com)

To make the voices of the “others” visible, Sayapina uses an interdisciplinary approach of performance, multimedia, installation, painting and text. Her methods are based on the practices of community-based and socially engaged art, with the aim of giving space to the voices of the disadvantaged and shedding light on their issues through artistic means.

In her work TEMPORALITY, for example, she deals with the biography of people who had to leave their homeland due to political oppression or war. Based on interviews with Belarusian immigrants, the work shows the emotional side of flight, such as personal feelings of loss, helplessness and confusion, fear, insecurity and guilt.
Sayapina was arrested in her flat in Minsk in autumn 2020 for taking part in an art action against violence. After serving her sentence, she left Belarus and currently lives in Poland.

GABRIELA
KOBUS

LETTER TO MOM

Opening:

Saturday 12.10.2024 from 18 pm

13. Oktober – 9. November 2024
Wednesdays 16 – 19 pm
Saturdays 15 – 18 pm, or by appointment (info@co3art.com)

Gabriela Kobus focusses on the relationship between people and their environment in complex networked physical and social systems.

In her artistic practice, she primarily creates installations and objects, but her oeuvre also includes drawings and paintings.
 
Kobus’ works are based on an examination of living realities in urban space. The resulting projects deal with basic human needs and infrastructures of coexistence in the context of aggressive urban growth – which often leads to the loss of home. With the international INFORMAL CITY PARK PROJECT, Kobus addresses aspects of urban life in connection with the longing for distraction and pleasure.
 
The CATEGORY BOARDS series deals with questions of value systems and patterns of inclusion and exclusion within social structures. 

(www.gabrielakobus.com)

IMPRINT

THE FRAGILITY OF HOME

Eine Serie interkultureller
Perspektiven auf das Zuhause

Linda Nadji — April 2024
Gohar Dashti — Juni 2024
Nadya Sayapina — September 2024
Gabriela Kobus — November 2024

Gefördert von:

©2024 CO³
cologne | contemporary | concept