Artists: Marthe Ramm Fortun and Andrea Galiazzo
Exhibition title: Pink Glass Swan
Venue: Huset for Kunst & Design, Holstebro, Denmark
Date: November 18, 2022 – February 19, 2023
Photography: ©Jacob Friis Holm Nielsen / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Huset for Kunst & Design, Copenhagen
In a hospital in Bruxelles in 2015 Marthe Ramm Fortun and Andrea Galiazzo greet their newborn daughter Leda. She is prematurely born and they are hospitalized for a longer period while the child struggles to survive. The hospital is guarded by armed soldiers because of the terror attack in Paris the same year. The fragility and sense of emergency in their personal lives is mirrored outside on a larger scale. They experience, as many parents before them, that they have to slowly reinvent themselves as human beings, now both parents and artists, and that they will need to transform limitations into resources.
In the exhibition space The Ship at HFKD a large tapestry hangs with a text that reads: “Look at us so tired and consumed by self-imposed overtime yet frustrated when unable to work with all the pain punctuated by memorable moments and the children playing around and we are still so well dressed all things considered don’t we”. These are the words of the father and of the people depicted, and they tell a tale about private life and work life merging. Is it the wet dream of modernism when life and art become one or the wet dream of neoliberalism: The ever flexible, fluent and creative workflow that adapts and is productive in any condition?
Pink Glass Swan is a new adaptation of the exhibition Leda og Svanen (Leda and the swan) that Ramm Fortun and Galiazzo did in Oslo in 2019. For the exhibition at HFKD the duo has built at room within the exhibition space. Its only entrance is the height of their daughter Leda in 2019. To gain access to the space one must do so on the child’s terms. In the works for the exhibition we find traces of a negotiation between parental care and artistic work, and in a more direct sense we find a practical solution from when they temporarily lived with Leda at a residency in Paris: A living space and a studio in one. Here they covered the walls with paper, so that Leda could draw freely wherever she wanted. By exhibiting the drawings Ramm Fortun and Galiazzo blur the lines between the private and the public, work and family, and draw them up again. The drawings of the child mark out a space of time: Time for the parents to work and have thoughts of their own. An attempt at concentration on borrowed time.
The title Pink Glass Swan is borrowed from curator, critic and feminist activist Lucy R. Lippard’s essaycollection from 1996 by the same name. For Ramm Fortun and Galiazzo the pink glass swan becomes a unifying term for the narratives we bring along with us and those we part with. It becomes a prism that can break the past, so that class, gender and culture is illuminated and understood as the ever changing entities they are. With “Myths circling us like old friends” the duo has made an installation centrered around autobiographical experiences, feminist activism, the Greek myth about Leda and the Swan and the drawings of their daughter.
At the opening, Marthe Ramm Fortun will be performing in the exhibition. In addition, artists Melanie Kitti and Anna Sofie Mathiasen have each written a poem for the exhibition.
Marthe Ramm Fortun (b. 1978, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo, Norway, where she is adjunct professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Fortun received her education from University of the Arts, London, New York University, New York and HISK – Higher Institute of Fine Art, Ghent. Recent solo exhibitions include Skriver for ikke å skade at Femtensesse, Oslo (2022); TA VARE! at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (2019); Stones to the Burden at The Munch Museum, Oslo (2016) and Skrive byen, skrive den om at UKS, Oslo (2014). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions and biennials in Norway and abroad including Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal; Monnaie de Paris, Paris; Gladstone Gallery, Brussels; The Vigeland Museum, Oslo; Komplot, Brussels; Performatik, Brussels and Performa, New York. Current projects include ALL SHE LEFT BEHIND!, a museum acquisition of four performances at Henie Onstad Art Center, Høvikodden (2021-2022); a new commission entitled Er det så farlig for The National Museum, Oslo (2022-2023); and Vi skal ikke skrive lærebøker (2019-2029), a ten-year performance cycle for the project Voice of Minerva at the Museum of Natural History in Bergen, curated by Marit Paasche and commissioned by KORO – Public Art Norway.
Andrea Galiazzo (b. 1983 in Padova, Italy) lives and works in Oslo. He graduated from IUAV University of Venice, HISK – Higher Institute of Fine Art in Ghent, and Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Recently he presented the solo exhibitions In Broad Daylight at Trondhjems Kunstforening (2020) and Shoes and Cigarettes at Galleri Frychini, Oslo (2018). Group exhibitions include Drawing. The Bottom Line at SMAK – Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent; Avskygninger at Kristiansand Kunsthall; Spring Depot at Tenthaus; Human Touch – Tegnetriennalen 2019 at Tegneforbundet and Høstutstillingen 2022 at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.
The tapestry of Andrea Galiazzo is made in collaboration with the TextielLab, The TextielMuseum’s Professional Workshop. The exhibition program at HFKD, 2020- 2022 is supported by Holstebro Municipality, Danish Art Foundation, Færchfonden, 15. Juni Fonden and Augustinus Fonden. Furthermore this exhibition has received support from Norwegian Arts and Crafts and the Norwegian MFA’s Support Scheme for International Craft Projects aa well as Kunsthåndverkernes fond.
