ART CITIES:Uppsala -Tamar Ettun
As a performance artist, trained as a sculptor, Tamar Ettun’s artistic practice incorporates both movement and stillness. The duality has a symbolical impact where stillness and trauma are juxtaposed by movement and empathy. Trauma damages the ability of an individual to feel empathy and desire towards the other. In 2015, Tamar Ettun initiated an extensive project in four parts, titled “A Mauve Bird with Yellow Teeth Red Feathers Green Feet and a Rose Belly”, which will continue until 2018.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Uppsala Art Museum Archive
The first part was presented as a performance and video at Watermill Center as well as the exhibition “ALULA IN BLUE” at Fridman Gallery in New York. The second part, “The Yellow Who Wants”, the theme at Uppsala Art Museum, comments on Eros, desire and the life drive, and premiered as a performance in Bryant Park in April 2016. Ettun presents the second installment of her ongoing tetralogy, “Mauve Bird with Yellow Teeth Red Feathers Green Feet and a Rose Belly”. The tetralogy is based on a collection of short texts describing memory fragments from the artist’s childhood years in Jerusalem that have been coded with colors and seasons. Bodily movements and feelings are expressed through the experience of color – a bright yellow inflatable and casted bodily plaster sculptures combined with object trouvé. Ettun’s works are a formal investigation of materials and the visceral world. She breaks apart and assembles objects that would not normally be combined, which creates unique and transformative pieces that evoke abstracted narratives in a surrealistic manner. In the project, the artist interlaces her personal history and identity as an Israeli with the encounter of the local setting in Uppsala. The art expresses emotional knowledge, where the daily rituals, poems and objects surrounding us can mirror larger political processes. The exhibition looks back on some of her early performative videos and simultaneously present recent videos choreographed by the artist and performed with members of The Moving Company. Absurd physical tasks are performed by movers interacting with objects in an abstracted narrative. “The Yellow Who Wants” explores the conception of Eros and should be viewed as a sequel to the Blue chapter that dealt with empathy. Eros stems from the same source, but is also a multifaceted driving force that generates emotions and movement within a person and a community. It can create empathy, fear, compassion, and desire between one and the other. In Ettun’s symbolic language, the power of desire on its own is what creates the movement and avoids the stillness, fights death – the ultimate stillness. The exhibition space includes a “performative gallery” that changes throughout the duration of the show, presents sculpture in a performative way and incorporates artist talks and dance as part of the exhibition.
Info: Uppsala Art Museum, Drottning Christinas väg 1E, Uppsala, Duration: 12/5-21/8/16, Days & Hours: Tue & Fri-Sun 12:00-16:00, Wed 12:00-18:00, thu 12:00-20:00, http://konstmuseum.uppsala.se
