Eglė Kulbokaitė and Dorota Gawęda at Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg and WallRiss

Artists: Eglė Kulbokaitė and Dorota Gawęda

Exhibition title: Mouthless

Organized by: Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg and WallRiss

Venue: Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg, WallRiss, Fribourg, Switzerland

Date: February 1 – March 29, 2020

Photography: © Guillaume Baeriswyl / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Fri Art Kunsthalle and Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg and WallRiss, Fribourg

Note: Exhibition booklet is available here. Floor plan is available here

For their first monographic exhibition in a Swiss institution, Eglė Kulbokaitė and Dorota Gawęda transform Fri Art into a place of reception sensitive to the most contemporary fears. The environment created for the exhibition is a fragmented fiction in which eco-feminism theory, urban legends, witches trials, concrete geographical landmarks and impending ecological drama are mixed. Screens, sounds, smells, light effects, objects, texts address the visitor very directly and provoke his/her reflection. Through its narratives, the exhibition problematizes the distribution of the natural and the technological, the archaic and the futuristic, the real and its mediation. The “as if”, the speculative aspect of fiction questions our relationship to the production of truth. Borrowings from the popular genres of science fiction and horror reflect the unstable condition of the bodies that are currently going through an identity and ecological crisis. The exhibition will extend beyond Fri Art exhibition rooms. A diorama installed in the WallRiss art space will be used as a location for filming and production. This location will also serve as a relay antenna for broadcasting in the city centre. The exhibition is imagined as a rumor spreading throughout the city of Fribourg.

Dorota Gawęda (*1986, Lublin / Basel) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (*1987 Kaunas / Basel) began their collaboration in 2013, with their extended serial project Young Girl Reading Group (YGRG). Under this project, they organized more than 150 reading groups and performances at a sustained pace. Over the past six years, they have produced performances and solo exhibitions in numerous places, among the most recent, Sunk into it, part of it at Futura, Prague (2019); I get those gossebumps everytime you come around at Lucas Hirsch Gallery, Düsseldorf (2018); YGRG 154X: reading with the single hand V at Cell Project Space, London (2018), and participated in group shows such as 13th Baltic Triennial, Vilnius/Riga/Tallinn (2018); the 6th Athens Biennale (2018), or the 6th Moscow Biennale for Young Art at MMOMA (2018).

Exhibition view, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless, Fri Art, 2020. Photo Guillaume Baeriswyl, Courtesy of Fri Art Kunsthalle

Death by Landscape (Fribourg), 2020, 262 x 139,3 cm. Digital print on glass, lead (Andreas Vetterli workshop), larch wood frame, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless, Fri Art. Photo: Guillaume Baeriswyl, Courtesy of Fri Art Kunsthalle

Exhibition view, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless, Fri Art, 2020. Photo Guillaume Baeriswyl, Courtesy of Fri Art Kunsthalle

Mouthless (And when the ax came into the forest, the trees said: the handle is one of us), 2020, dimensions variable, ten screen looped video installation, steel, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless, Fri Art. Photo: Guillaume Baeriswyl, Courtesy of Fri Art Kunsthalle

Exhibition view, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless, Fri Art, 2020. Photo Guillaume Baeriswyl, Courtesy of Fri Art Kunsthalle

Spectator (I-V), 2020, 80 x 36 x 12 cm. Steel, print on leather, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless, Fri Art Photo: Guillaume Baeriswyl, Courtesy of Fri Art Kunsthalle