A solo exhibition by Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová
waterside contemporary, 2013
Encompassing installation, video, text and performance, Chişa and Tkáčová’s work re-configures and unsettles established social and political power structures, to allow for a notion of alternative world orders. Bringing together ideas from disparate sources, the duo expose cracks in our habitual formulations of power, value, gender or political desire. The artists’ collaboration itself is a constant mixing of the individual selves to create a new temporary entity.
Central in the exhibition is Either Way, We Lose, a giant inflatable fist. Throughout history, the raised fist has been a universal symbol of protest, adopted by (often contrary) social groups. Here, the call to action is confined by the gallery’s architecture, deflatable, and animated only by a constant supply of pressurised air. Alongside, sits Freedom Trash Can, a hobo’s stove fashioned out of an empty oil drum. While the work’s (disputed) original of 1986 would have helped Women’s Liberation protesters set their bras on fire, the Can’s ‘eternal flame’ carries on only as decoration.
This humorous relationship with futility is Chişa’s and Tkáčová’s attempt to collapse the historical, philosophical pillars of society. Retreating into jibe, gossip or mantra, the artists’ work exists in a plane that is beyond economic, legislative, political control. aCtivaTe aMok, not a causaL chAin is a call to arms; the artists even furnish us with the stones to throw.