Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld : Tout Doux: Gong Bath

On Wednesday, May 4, 2022, at 6pm, Quartz Studio is pleased to present Tout Doux: Gong Bath, the first solo show in Turin by Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld (Berlin, Germany, 1979).

The mental, physical, emotional stress that globalized capitalism constantly sparks has made the body of our society chronically inflamed. Enlightened by the flames of burning witches, our hemisphere has also lost sustainable knowledge and the practice of magic, care and healing. The attacks on female power did not peak in the Dark Ages, as commonly believed, but in the Renaissance, the epoch of rising reason and science. The Italian American socialist Silvia Federici (Parma, Italy, 1942) thinks that the practice of magic had to be dismantled to create the disciplined, almost mechanical body of the worker, needed for capitalism: A “self,” able to follow the clock instead of magical powers; easily controlled in order to extract its workforce. Women with their reproductive abilities had to be violently inserted into such a hierarchy, so they would do their (care) work for free: become an extractible re-source.

Tout Doux: Gong Bath is an instrument in the shape of a woman’s body. In this interpretation of the female nude, the sensuality of the forms is not emphasized. The figures are delineated in the space by colorful steel lines, while feminine sexual identity, usually affiliated with breasts, appears as two bronze gongs. Weight and fleshliness are removed and replaced by a potency for being well, conveyed by the vibrational power of sound waves.

The sound waves produced by a gong enter and travel through the body of the listener and touch every cell like the wind fluttering the leaves of a tree. For those kinds of waves, anyone and anything can turn into a pool or an ocean to quench the inflammation. The listener’s heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, and breath is restored to its natural rhythm. The gong induces an inner resonance.

The installation at Quartz Studio consists of three female figures permeating the tiled space. They invite the audience to be plunged into a witch spa well.

Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld (Berlin, Germany, 1979) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Based on the assumption that our western liberal understanding of the world is not sufficient to cope with the ever-increasing global mess, Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld continuously designs various mysterious laboratories and treatments, in which solutions, healing and meaning are attempted to be generated anew with the most diverse interdisciplinary methods. Schönfeld is jestingly looking for relevant updates of so-called folk wisdom. Her labs materialize through installations, performances, sculptures, instruments, photographs and collages.

Her works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Art Geneve Musique (2022) HKW Berlin (2021) Belo Campo Lisbon (2021) Berghain (2020), Strasbourg Biennale (2019) Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden- Baden (2018), MAK Wien/ Vienna Biennale (2017), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2017), Kunstverein Wolfsburg (2016), Fotomuseum Winterthur (2014), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2012) and Berlinische Galerie (2010/2011). Schönfeld was granted a travel scholarship by the DAAD to Siberia in 2005, was a resident at Villa Aurora Los Angeles in 2011, received the FOAM Talents Award of the Foto-Museum Amsterdam in 2014 and a grant of Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn in 2012 and 2020. She was commissioned a public sculpture by the New Mexico State University in 2020.

Quartz Studio would like to thank the artist. A special thanks to Wendelin Kammermeier, Berlin. The exhibition will be open from May 4 to July 16, 2022, by appointment.