Nadia Belerique, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Kathy Slade / Gili Tal: The Cascades

Kunstverein Braunschweig is excited to present two new exhibitions across its two buildings and the surrounding grounds: An exhibition of new and existing works, by three Canadian artists—Nadia Belerique, Jeneen Frei Njootli and Kathy Slade—is on display in and around the Villa. This exhibition is a partnership between Kunstverein Braunschweig and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. The Remise of the Kunstverein is showing Gili Tal’s new exhibition The Cascades, the artist’s first institutional solo presentation in Germany.

Villa:
Nadia Belerique, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Kathy Slade

In her artistic work, Nadia Belerique (*1982) examines the relationship between object and (photographic) representation as well as the possibilities of subtle manipulations of perception in space. Using deliberately distorted everyday objects and invoked symbols, she lays narrative trails that allude to various, sometimes contradictory narrations. Moments of intimacy and retreat are explored against the backdrop of blurred boundaries between private and public space and between psychological and physical space.

Jeneen Frei Njootli’s (*1988) interdisciplinary practice with performance, sound, and installation is inspired by their cultural background and personal experiences. Njootli is a member of the Vuntut Gwitchin, a Canadian Indigenous community that is self-governing to this day. They interrogate traditional materials and objects, which are closely interwoven with the memory of their ancestors, in terms of their relation to trade, ceremony, politics, and the body.

Kathy Slade’s (*1966) expansive, multidisciplinary practice moves across genres from visual and popular cultures to gendered labours through the use of textiles, sculpture, publication, sound, film, and video works. Spanning a breadth of Slade’s practice over the last two decades, the exhibition focuses on reading and publishing, offering meditations on the role of the artist, publisher, and teacher.

Guest Room:
We welcome DOKUARTS and the Braunschweig International Film Festival as guests with a selection of films thematically linked to Canada.

Curators: Franz Hempel, Jule Hillgärtner, Nele Kaczmarek, Julia Lamare (CAG)

This exhibition is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Remise:
Gili Tal: The Cascades

The works of Gili Tal (*1983) draw on genres of commercial photography such as that of real estate, imitating its tropes in an attempt to fathom how the urban environment is fetishised.

Tal’s exhibition The Cascades consists of a series of digital prints on canvas effectively “cladding” the inside of the Remise of the Kunstverein Braunschweig in an irregular chequer-board pattern. Titled Windows (Rainscreen Wash), they feature a repeated motif simulating rain and drawn in the style of stock image graphics. Rendered in shades of blue and featuring a literally washed out “Shutterstock” watermark, the pictures pertain to the appearance of new builds as seen from the ground, and the perceived effects of light, water and shadow on glass—an effect itself referenced by the aluminium cladding styles of numerous contemporary facades.

In these pictures we see “Shutterstock” and “Windows” conflated to meet a series of inversions. Instead of gazing out we appear to look in. But to what? The view that these windows should be opening unto has been photographed to near oblivion. Instead of a window, and its pervasive fantasies of roaming, or indeed reflecting, our gaze is razed and bounced back. Echoing Tal’s works taking in exhibition photography and its strange relationship to solipsism, we encounter another kind of reflection where a window should be.

Curator: Raoul Klooker