Artist: Sophie Carapetian
Exhibition title: Refuse to Collaborate
Venue: Stadtgalerie Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Date: February 19 – April 16, 2022
Photography: Cedric Mussano / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Stadtgalerie, Bern
The exhibition Refuse to Collaborate, plays with the multiple meanings of “refuse”: as a verb, refuse means to decline, to reject and to ignite etc., as a noun it means waste, garbage, or debris. Refuse to Collaborate therefore means “decline to collaborate” as well as “waste to collaborate.” Sophie Carapetian is an artist and typesetter. She works with inexpensive and mass-produced materials. In Refuse to Collaborate, a grid of white trash bags stretches across the walls, ceiling, and floor of the Stadtgalerie. It is disorienting while simultaneously measuring the bodies of viewers against its grid of refuse. Eyes on the walls cast their meandering gazes through the space. The grid covers the room, making visible the economic logic that structures all that is social, that makes everything into an immense accumulation of commodities, and whose primary product is work and worklessness—that is, the reduction of countless lives to waste. The works in the exhibition are testimonies to and part of the resistance and organizing of the artist, other artists, poets, and theorists against this system. Over a ten-year period, these collaborations have generated books and print ephemera, including poetry and historical, theoretical, and fictional texts, which are also on view in the exhibition. Accompanying this is another publication, Refuse to Collaborate, which was sent out to all mailing-list subscribers prior to the opening and is available free of charge at the Stadtgalerie. Sophie Carapetian lives—as she says—in what is left of London.
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern
Sophie Carapetian, Refuse to Collaborate, 2022, exhibition view, Stadtgalerie Bern