Classical anthropologists, such as Marcel Mauss, have studied the notion of the gift as an aesthetic, religious, economic and political phenomenon that is central to exchange between groups and serves to increase not only material and spiritual wealth and alliances, but most importantly, social solidarity. Each of the four Jerusalem Center for the Visual Arts (JCVA)2 artists-in-residence featured in this exhibition independently focused on the gift element inherent to their residency experience. Perhaps this is no accident. In a globalized market where industry traverses great distances to find the cheapest labor, artists-in-residence often generate a richly reciprocal, expansive and generous exchanges. Dale Berning Sawa, a performance and sound artist, created a special sound work for her JCVA residency and performed it at the opening of an international performance biennale in Tel Aviv. She expanded this piece for the current exhibition and added drawings and music to a poem titled “The Gift (Matan),” addressing the notion of residency as a generous offering.
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Daniel Chust Peters’ Airless embodies the four principles of his work methodology, all of which state that under all circumstances – whether he has a new idea or not – he recreates his studio, and that the titles of his works are all prefixed by the word Air. Airless is a silver jewelry piece made in the shape of Chust Peters’ studio in Barcelona. After his JCVA residency, he created Airsoft, a porcelain gift box of sorts, which shows the artist’s studio wrapped as a gift. The work touches on the habitual lack of connection between donor and resident in such programs.
Servet Kocyigit’s selection, 99 Years, suggests a fresh and optimistically non-binary creation story. At the same time, it offers commentary on artist residencies as a global playground through which our images of the planet and its cultures can be made anew in a light-hearted, open-ended way.
Marjetica Potrcˇ’s on-site community projects often take place as residencies. The drawings she created especially for this exhibition express her view of the artist as an explorer and mediator. As she sees it, the artist’s role involves approaching new communities with a willingness to share and listen, which may give birth to a wealth of new ideas and possibilities.
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