D Harding: We breathe together / Cassandra Press: On Self-Defense

D Harding: We breathe together
November 18, 2022–January 8, 2023

Bergen Kunsthall is proud to present the first large-scale solo presentation by the artist D Harding in Europe. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Harding has shown in recent years in numerous large-scale international exhibitions. In many of these works, Harding used visual and social languages of their native communities, such as stencilling, to inquire about the complex and layered cultural heritage and aesthetic histories as a cultural continuum extended into the realms of international, contemporary art. Harding’s work seeks new forms for sharing materials and knowledge, often paying homage to or involving family members.

For the exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, Harding’s first large-scale solo exhibition outside of Australia, the question of transfer and, in a literal sense, transport becomes a conceptual focus. Some of the works in the exhibition are made with colours painted on paper and directly on the wall. The pigments used for these paintings are ochres sourced from the soil, which can have a spiritual dimension. Harding transported some of the ochres in woollen felt blankets made in homage to their ancestor’s cloaks made of possum skin. Saturated with earth pigments and gum Arabic, these felt works become vessels carrying the pigments worldwide. Once rehydrated, the wool revives and releases its contents. The paintings are site specifically produced and laden with the lands of Harding’s ancestors. Materials displayed in vitrines further explore the role of ochres bought from a global circulation of pigments, in which the materials take on different commercial meanings.

While Harding’s works seek direct connections to traditions in Aboriginal cultures in many ways, it is also mindful of maintaining protection and care and working against a tendency to exoticise or exploit ownership of a tradition. In the past, Harding frequently concealed parts of initial references or elements drawn from traditional techniques by imposing them with more abstract visual formats, in some works on canvas reminding of colour field painting, for example, and playfully touching on Western artistic traditions. 

One of the works of the exhibition in Bergen, which also lent the title to the show, We breathe together (2017/2021), presents pure pigments—ochre, charcoal, and synthetic pigment. All with importance within cultural traditions of Harding’s ancestry—on a long line of glass plates of the same size. What at first looks like a Minimalist work can be understood, with more information, as a map of territories, represented through materials of significance for these, and invites us into an exploration of the artist’s pigments as colour and matter.

D Harding was born in 1982 in Moranbah on the lands of the Barada Barna people (Australia). They live and work in Brisbane on the territories of the Turrbal and Jagera people. Recent exhibitions include documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2017), ARS22 at Kiasma–Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Reclaim the Earth at Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the 23rd Biennale of Sydney (all 2022).

Cassandra Press: On Self-Defense—a Cassandra Press reader in action
Co-curated by Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo (Puppies Puppies)
November 18, 2022–April 11, 2023

Cassandra Press was founded in 2016 by artist Kandis Williams as a pedagogically based independent publishing project. At its core, Cassandra Press examines tools of perception and racism, and their dominant role and expressions, within the current sociocultural systems. The press publishes lo-fi readers with texts by Black critical theorists, organizes courses and produces artist zines and catalogues covering a broad range of topics that fuse questions of ethics, racial colonial violence, white supremacist delusion, and aesthetics. Some recent Cassandra Press publications include “Misogynoir,” a reflection on sexual violence and slavery’s perversion of sexuality; “Black Twitter,” a crash course on media theory, literacy and intersections with critical race theory; and “Cannibalism, Blackface & Minstrelsy.” The Cassandra Press artist zine series curated and commissioned by Williams invites artists to publish conceptual texts, original and sourced artworks, essays, poems and stories.

In partnership with Bergen Kunsthall, Cassandra Press presents the two-part project On Self-Defense. The first part of this project opens with a reading room installation with the full catalogue of Cassandra Press readers and a new series of artist zines. Among the artists invited to produce the artist zines for the exhibition are Christine Wang, Hannah Black, manuel arturo abreu and Boz Garden and Charlotte Zhang. This will be the first presentation of artist zines and special edition readers since Cassandra Press’ participation in the Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept at the Whitney Museum, New York. It will also be the first time these artist zines are shared in Europe.

For the second part of the project, Williams and artist Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo (Puppies Puppies) will carry out a research project on self-defense. Williams and Puppies Puppies will come together to discuss issues of safety, especially for people who identify as a part of the trans and BIPOC communities. By meeting with martial arts, self-defense, and mental health coaches, as well as researching past self-defense movements, the two will be in conversation about physical and spiritual forms of protection. This dialogue will guide the construction of a new reader, Reader on Self-Defense. In addition, Cassandra Press will organize and host two courses on self-defense to queer communities of color.

The Reader on Self-Defense will be included in a second part of the exhibition, opening in March 2023, helping to shape a nuanced and complex dialogue about self-defense movements, centered on personal safety and social power dynamics. By stepping outside the traditional exhibition model, this project furthers the groundwork for a collaborative form of learning and theorizing in community. This constructive process includes a display of work that will evolve throughout the project, making intentional use of the exhibition space and time as a site for research.

Pulling away from the constructs of individualized self-protection, Cassandra Press in collaboration with Bergen Kunsthall uses the On Self-Defense project and the resources for its production to create tools that further a conversation and provide practical help, particularly for members of the trans and BIPOC communities.

Related events

Talks
Plattform—A conversation with Kandis Williams 
Friday, November 18, 7pm. Free
Upstairs and streamed online

Plattform—A conversation with D Harding and Vivian Ziherl 
Saturday, November 19, 2pm. Free
Upstairs and streamed online

Opening
Friday, November 18, 7–10pm
Free

Tours
Every Sunday at 2pm
Every Sunday at 1pm (Families)

Press requests
Emilio Sanhueza, Bergen Kunsthall: T +47 99 29 89 84 / emilio [​at​] kunsthall.no