The house is a home to a paradox. With these words, a new travelling exhibition that’s set to open Thursday holds the promise of exploring the house as an interface to our social, economic and political lives.
Titled Domestic Affairs, the exhibition attempts to go beyond the conventional façade of ideas associated with home. “Our home is not just the place where we live; it is a place where we encounter friends and strangers, where we exchange goods and services, where we engage or influence political systems, and where we participate in the global community,” a note by the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCU-Q) says.
Initiated by Bureau Europa and curated by Giovanni Innella and Agata Jaworska, this third edition of Domestic Affairs is in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCU-Qatar) and the Doha Fire Station Artist in Residence. Domestic Affairs opens at Fire Station’s Garage Gallery at 6.30pm on Thursday, and will be on until May 15. The opening hours of Fire Station are Saturday-Thursday from 10am to 8pm, and Friday, from 2pm to 8pm.
The note further elaborates, “The house is a home to a paradox. It houses the simultaneous desire to share private matters in the public realm and to seek privacy in public. While we install WiFi-blocking technology, we invite unknown guests to rent one of our rooms for a night or two.”
Earlier in January, a month-long exhibition titled Home was held at HBKU Student Center Art Gallery, expanding on the saying of “home is where the heart is.” The “Home” project is part of an ongoing exploration surrounding the idea of the domestic landscape, developed in the multidisciplinary Art Foundation programme at VCU-Q.
Jesse Payne, Assistant Professor Art Foundation Department at VCU-Q, who directed the first-year students in the art studio to pursue inquiries around personal objects and experiment with various mark-making techniques in order to translate domestic experiences into their work, had then told Community, “We are asking our students to investigate about what home means to them. Whether home is a place, a physical space, a mental space or something that exists where family is? Some students are looking at it from a very physical point of view, in choosing an object that they feel gives them a sense of home while others are thinking about it in terms of a mental space and a sentimental type of object that they feel reminds them of home.”
In that exhibition, which went on until February 25, the students were asked to look at a number of different objects in a critical way and think about the importance of those objects in their lives. While many came up with objects that are very much related to local culture, others showcased works that were more open to interpretation. Payne had then said, “The object in the drawing challenges the viewers to put themselves in relationship with each one of the objects and decipher it, thinking about what home means to various people in this culture.”
Meanwhile, VCU-Q Gallery will host Nastassja E Swift’s exhibition titled I Keep Repeating it Over and Over in My Head – it opens Sunday at 6pm, and will be on until April 3. “With the generous support of the Qatar Foundation, The Painting and Printmaking Department is proud to showcase the VCU-Q Fellowship and the work of this year fellow Nastassja E Swift. Each year the programme selects two artists at varying stages of their careers to become artists in residence at VCU-Q,” says a note by the university.
“Alluding to feelings of doubt and anxiety, I Keep Repeating it Over and Over in My Head features work that illustrates both the reaction to experiencing racism and, subsequently, the desire to construct the right identity in order to achieve acceptance. Consisting of needle-felted faces and woven hair, the exhibition combines conventional and unconventional uses of fibre processes and materials,” the note further adds.
This group of work is an accumulation of the conceptual development and research during Swift’s residency in Qatar. To create her works, Swift fuses memories from her childhood with fictional responses that depict provocative self-portraits and narratives.