Project: Missing Homes
Curator: Danai Giannoglou
Exhibition: 4 juli - 5 september 2021
Art (Actuality) History School: 22 July 2021
SMET Info boot tours: 17 & 31 July
Arie de Fijter: Narrated walk along seven churches:
17 July, 31 July, 14 August, 28 August.
Missing Homes will open on 3 July and run up until 5 September 2021. Throughout this time a public summer program will unfold, with guided walks, a picnic, an Art History School, and more to come. This curatorial residency and exhibition is part of Hotel Maria Kapel’s year program On Shelter, which invited exhibition proposals from recent participants of the de Appel Curatorial Programme.
Background
“My grandfather used to say that as long as you have a tile over your head everything would be alright, meaning that you can overcome all difficulties as long as you have a roof over your head, a home. Weirdly enough, in our way of being, our vernacular, it seems as if danger can only exist in the public sphere. But are private and domestic spaces automatically safe and friendly? It seems the idea is being constantly, explicitly and brutally disproved in reality today.”
Throughout the last year, Hotel Maria Kapel’s curatorial resident Danai Giannoglou, has been considering the less discussed, less cozy, more tangible conditions of home while developing Missing Homes, with Arie de Fijter, Sarah Naqvi, and Paky Vlassopoulou, as well as Shreya de Souza and Mylou Oord (organizers of the Queer Choir Amsterdam together with Sarah Naqvi). Meanwhile, Setareh Noorani and Matt Plezier develop the parallel program Shelter in place / Shelter in solidarity. Together, they inhabit a house that is not a home and make themselves at home – only temporarily – inside the building of the chapel and the city of Hoorn.
Bio: Danai Giannoglou
Danai Giannoglou, born in Athens in 1992, is a curator and writer currently living and working between Amsterdam and Athens. Giannoglou is the co-founder and curator of Enterprise Projects, a project space functioning independently and periodically since September 2015 in Athens, as well as the editor of Enterprise Projects Journal. She was a participant of the de Appel Curatorial Programme 2019/2020 in Amsterdam and is currently working as an assistant curator and research assistant at de Appel Amsterdam. Giannoglou has contributed texts in catalogues, artist’s books and magazines, edited publications and is a recipient of the Onassis AiR Emergency Fellowship 19/20 and the 2nd SNF Artist Fellowship Program (Curating) 2019/20.
Artists: Missing Homes
Narrated walk along seven churches, Arie de Fijter
In his interest in architecture, Arie de Fijter (born 1986) likes to play with the profession’s methodologies of representation; think of scale models, technical drawings and cartography. His personal work takes the form of objects or images that refer to the setting they are placed in. He considers miniaturization a strategy to make our complex surroundings tangible and share their narratives. This act of sharing often involves participants in a chain of communication. The simple experience of inhabiting the built environment while reflecting upon it tries to reveal architecture’s obvious presence, as well as our everyday relation to it. Arie holds an MA in Architecture since 2009 and graduated from Studio for Immediate Spaces at the Sandberg Institute in 2017.
Film: Amsterdam Queer Choir
Shreya de Souza & Mylou Oord
Shreya de Souza (she/her)(India/Portugal, 1995) is an artist living and working in Amsterdam. She is interested in power struggles, the incessant male gaze, the othering of queerness, ‘western ideals’ and normative heterosexuality that hold and control present day society. Mylou Oord (they/the)(The Netherlands, 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist whose primary focus has long been in the field of social equity within the realm of mental health, accessibility, queerness and class struggle. Together, the artists have collaborated on community oriented projects such as Vegan Lesbian Curry, Queer Choir Amsterdam, alongside artist Sarah Naqvi and on a video project for Melkweg Expo space in celebration of International Women’s Day. ‘Homo Centraal’ (working title) is a video work in progress that features the bringing together of Queer Choir Amsterdam alongside footage of a CGI queer island made in collaboration with Paula Garcia Sans that invites the viewer to enter and be nearby an imagined digital queer world.
Sarah Naqvi
Sarah Naqvi (she/they), is an Indian artist, based in Mumbai/ Amsterdam. Their work engages in narratives themed around religious and societal polarisation, centering art as their tool for activism. The materiality and techniques in their work are at play to create familiarity with the viewer, with satire, whimsical props, and softness you are made to believe something joyous awaits. Once these thematics are established and make one comfortable, the visuals are then layered with confronting truths scripted based on prominent sociopolitical developments in their environment. Primarily working with textile, embroidery, songs, found objects, and performance, they have developed a keen interest in puppetry. The usage of these mediums has been intentional, as they continue to challenge visibility amongst ‘domestic’ art and reach audiences beyond the art world.
Paky Vlassopoulou
Paky Vlassopoulou (b.1985) is an artist who lives and works in Athens, Greece. Her work is informed by the dialectics of traditional sculpture-making in relation to spatial issues, objecthood, functionality and bodily experiences. From time to time she is concerned with thematics that deal with knowledge production, history, ruins, while in recent years her works revolve around the concepts of proximity, care and hospitality. In 2012, together with artists Chrysanthi Koumianaki and Kosmas Nikolaou, she co-founded 3 137, an artist-run space operating in Athens, Greece. (www.3137.gr)
Shelter in Place
SMET: Setareh Noorani & Matt Plezier
Since February 2021, Setareh Noorani and Matt Plezier have been working together on a project at and about HMK and its surroundings with the title Shelter in Place. As an artistic duo, SMET investigates the notion of shelter as it is offered within a community, or as it is not. In what way do uncertain times affect the degree and way in which we shelter and receive each other, both typologically and metaphorically? Especially in a world that is hyper-individualistic and hit by an ongoing pandemic? In the coming months, SMET will explore various aspects of this question within the context of Hoorn, its history and its surroundings.
Art (Actualy)History School:
Soft resistance, hard resistance
Walks, queering, squatting, something to hold on to, and the neoliberal turn.
Thursday, 22 July 2021, 19:30-21:00.
An interactive art history or rather an actuality referencing lecture by the artist in residence Alina Lupu, responding to the exhibition Missing Homes, curated by Danai Giannoglou, with Arie de Fijter, Sarah Naqvi, Paky Vlassopoulou, Shreya de Souza, and Mylou Oord, as organizers of Queer Choir Amsterdam, together with Sarah Naqvi and Setareh Noorani & Matt Plezier (SMET).
Alina’s task will be to freely associate and make links to present-day events wondering where can we currently find proofs of resistance concerning the notion of shelter and institutional frameworks, and how do these proofs of resistance manifest. The works in the exhibition Missing Homes will play the role of starting points, of anchors, which will guide the conversation.
