Embracement Series

A collaboration with Anike Joyce Sadiq

Resilience: A term that has become part of everyday vocabulary by now and is regarded as a key competence for countering exhaustion, vulnerability, fragility and precariousness through one’s own efforts. But what if that doesn’t work out – what if the exceptional state becomes permanent?

These questions form the starting point of a conversation between the artist Anike Joyce Sadiq and the choreographer and performer Laurie Young. The “embracements”, sculptural imprints and manifestations of a state of exhaustion, are a core element of the exhibition. They do not only negotiate the disruptive potential of exhaustion, but also the possibilities of reorientation and encounter that can arise from this state. What happens if the state of exhaustion isn’t averted and overcome, but studied and acknowledged? Is it possible to question categories like dysfunctionality and to re-think normality by relying on intuition and improvisation? What would an homage to the tired body look like? While looming for answers to these questions, Sadiq and Young examine the exhausted body’s social, psychological, and physical state — invite visitors to reconsider the relation of freezing, stagnating, and pausing. (Text by curator Elisabeth Pichler)