Artists: Aisha Christison, Margarita Maximova
Exhibition title: Harm and Charm
Venue: Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels, Belgium
Date: January 9 – February 27, 2021
Photography: © GRAYSC / courtesy of the artist and Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
It is possible but it’s not happening
if you lose a thing the retrieval of what you think you have lost becomes that thing the facts of loss become the content of living then it will be not another thing but something that you have lost then you retrieved an event demarcated by wire with an anniversary pinned to its essence instead of it being just a thing that you could forget or you never knew that you needed therefore of all the things you could have seen you elected to see one thing at a time like a one-eyed machine that works so hard for love that you only know is there if it breaks the search is always brought by the violence the Violence like a blaring fire alarm in all the rooms you sleep there is science they say most stars we see are already dead and why shouldn’t they die and how would it not kill you you know to know that I’ve always wanted to sit in this car with you with no driver and no engine and drive forever until we see towers the earth looming large over a port city don’t you see that the general borders on the particular what is ours was everyone’s could have been anyone’s you suddenly realize that our sufferings do not depend on their object and there is something tragic but something comic in the repetition itself this recording this inimitable recording resembling all the recordings is a fan turning so fast it looks like a plate the windmill of a dwelling here the capturing is the occasion but in it is inscribed already the failure having is losing like an egg on a brick wall a series is formed the transition from one love to another finds its law in forgetting fuck this recording fuck all the recordings all the closed boxes what was to be memory already lost before it is captured in this version of the world they won’t let you return it in spite of yourself something about fur that irks something about someone painting a shark on their surfboard recording is time honestly what isn’t if you asked nicely maybe they would dial back the time to before you had met before you were born before everyone you have ever heard of was born you could sit atop a hill watch sabretooths roll in mud if there was ever such a thing as mud there is something of course I can tell you about time not moving in circles but in spirals there’s a repetition but every day is another waking up a body 7 am a kiss next to the the same consciousness every day and that these images these dreams may change but they don’t maybe you want to always coincidentally remember the time that you were in love because forgetting it would hurt you and why not they set fire to your memory palace after all what is a more memorable thing than everything ablaze crackling like this irregular buzz did you think that you would one day capture something more significant than just life love it or hate it you’re still going to breathe it you take a flower you press it to preserve it you carve your commode no you carve your cupboard you carve under your table an initial a heart pierced by an arrow an arrow of time in short you make a mark so that this will not go unnoticed each turn of the screw each push of the chisel the knife the every cut of the knife is different buries deeper what was not deep and there was just a little moment there until you waited for the next one and then the next one all we only know is that a day is there because we try not with bodies but with language to meet each other in our heads your many eyes impress me there is a question they ask about what a liar really is what it can be well who doesn’t know occasional rifts good liars you can’t call that they are never caught only felt how can anything ever be lost if we know it existed you think that’s how remembrance works and you know it won’t be the fires but all the meaningful missed connections that burn the city around in the fields we still wander without suffering stay and say that it pleases you the auburn of the parking lot again and again even if we know the landscape so well it still comes rising within floating like a body dumped in a shallow river there is danger from ear to ear and you do not like my new love now that it is sober and plain and will be plainer now that you have all the space what you desire is time summer pours salt on city wound pain unfolds in swooshes suddenly and frankly finally it fits in your ribs and the rain carries the radiation away all force must go upward shallow and wet the first and last device to produce a current in history will be a heart but it won’t reassure the sleep before you close them on the corner of your eyes they are going to bob at the end of a web that connects an astral body to a real body baby it only makes sense do you remember you almost made a baby as an offering to the distance that was about to separate you a sacrifice to the distance so it could be an arm’s length forever but cruelly if I think about it everything we do is either pass the time or freeze it cast it in Procaine or warm soil or dandelions and I really didn’t want to be the one to tell you that if you missed the red moon it will take another hundred and fifty years the moon is not a dimmable machine it just gambles like one because it knows that the last thing it will see is the smoke rising from an earth on fire and just before that people walking dodgy areas in the city at night to sleep with each other before a dark hand lifts all citizens out of it in the meanwhile kindness is what makes you stand upright yeah I should say now these are just some of my thoughts into this recorder what else woman next to me keeps tearing pages off of her diary tongue clatters it is disgusting to be in a chair in this waiting room waiting learning different words in another language for room thrash pillow soon there will be a wound I guess there is something in the time that gives it a little bit of healing that relates it all to to to a bit of together we are looking for time lost and and wishing it was at the at the very least indecipherable buzz
lay on the grass when the sun falls on you it will break you in pieces this I can say I know where it all ends right here and how just like this how to face all the corners at the same time is this thing on
how to avoid sleeping how many times can you figure it out I used to charge batteries by the windowsill of our house its tenants now disembodied voices in tapes of answering machines and commemorated here in another voice that wanted to be sure to reach you to tell you that it takes care of this vessel
-Artun Alaska Arasli
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison & Margarita Maximova, Harm and Charm, 2020, installation view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels
Aisha Christison, Waste management, 2020, oil on linen, 80 x 100 cm
Aisha Christison, Pony at the gate, 2020, oil on linen, 26 x 22 cm
Aisha Christison, 3 Cheetahs, 2020, oil on linen, 28 x 33 cm
Aisha Christison, Nightlight, 2021, epoxy clay, plastic, battery powered LED, cable, 27 x 27 x 7 cm
Aisha Christison, Severing instinct, 2020, oil on linen, 100 x 80 cm
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Margarita Maximova, Sway a way, 2020, video installation 11’ 40’’, HD video, audio, stainless steel
Aisha Christison, A-R-T-I-C-U-L-A-T-E, 2020, oil on linen, stainless steel, variable dimensions
Aisha Christison, A-R-T-I-C-U-L-A-T-E, 2020, oil on linen, stainless steel, variable dimensions
Aisha Christison, Drink from the source, 2020, oil on linen, 33 x 28 cm
Margarita Maximova, Madmen, informers, sleuths, seducers, 2020, single screen video, audio 4’ 06”
Margarita Maximova, Madmen, informers, sleuths, seducers, 2020, single screen video, audio 4’ 06”
Margarita Maximova, Madmen, informers, sleuths, seducers, 2020, single screen video, audio 4’ 06”
Margarita Maximova, Madmen, informers, sleuths, seducers, 2020, single screen video, audio 4’ 06”