the soul in limbo 2016 The Cobra Museum of Modern Art, NL 6th edition Cobra Art Prize Amstelveen The exhibition highlights various thematic aspects of Tee s work over the past decade including the most recent developments. The exhibition s title derives from André Breton s novel Nadja (1928) and refers to a recurrent subject in Tee s works: the liminal state between the real and the possible. Through a web of references to Western culture, art history, and Eastern philosophy, Tee investigates the complexity of overlapping cultures and identities. Tee s exploration of the spiritual dimensions within her subjects of reference results in works that hover between their concrete form and their loaded potential as carriers of an anticipated action, ritual and animation. During the exhibition, several performances take place. 01/15
Vitrine with editions of Nadja by André Breton in different languages What Men Knew Nothing About Silkscreened textile banner 800 x 200 cm Brazilian flutes woodfired ceramics 22x14x10 cm Meatball Curtain Silkscreened textile banner 304 x 145 cm Mummie Sisters Wood, photo print 76x4x90 cm Un Autre Monde Metal construction for lamp 102 ceramic balls with letters 100 platinum teardrops 15x150x220 cm 02/15
1 What Men Knew Nothing About Silkscreened textile banner 800 x 200 cm Brazilian flutes woodfired ceramics 22x14x10 cm 2 Mummie Sisters Wood, photo print 76x4x90 cm Meatball Curtain Silkscreened textile banner 304 x 145 cm 1 2 03/15
Un Autre Monde Metal construction for lamp 102 ceramic balls with letters 100 platinum teardrops 15x150x220 cm 04/15
Platform with collection of CRYSTALLINE FLOORPIECES 05/15
1 Crystalline Floorpiece / Violamine (4) Hand-dyed wool 210 x 210 cm 2 Ancestral Sacrifice (urn & funary vase) Coiled stoneware 45x45x62 cm 2 1 06/15
Occult Geometry Series of diagrams and ceramic works 07/15
Tao Magic / Inner Parallel Glazed ceramics (2 ovals) 24 x 24 x 12 cm Tao Magic / Inner Parallel (fragment in white) Diagram series 3 print 50 x 35 cm Tao Magic / Inner Parallel Diagram series 3b 100 x 70 cm Tao Magic no.1 (black/white) Glazed Ceramics 24 x 24 x12 cm Shuudan Koudou (collective action) Ether Plane / Material Plane Diagram series 4 plate 1, 2 print 50 x 84 cm Line to Plane Wooden bow 23x285x4 cm 08/15
Performance what men knew nothing about January 17th and 24th, 2016 2pm and 4pm Performers: Marija Misevičiūtė Jurgis Lietunovas Duration: 6 min What Men Knew Nothing About is a text performance by a man and a woman, sitting on opposite sides of the banner. The text is written in a mixture of English and Lithuanian, and the performers attempts, successes, and failures to recite it in a synchronized way indicate a subtle and poetic comment by the artist on the notion of uniting. The drawings loosely refer to the Max Ernst painting Men Shall Know Nothing of This (1923). Ernst made this painting based on Freud s analysis of the book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903) by Paul Schreber, in which the unconscious is subject to gender transcending desires and demons. Ultimately, the work deals with ideas of dissolution and confusion of identity and a distorted sense of reality. 09/15
Performance what men knew nothing about Performers: Marija Misevičiūtė Jurgis Lietunovas Duration: 6 min 10/15
Performance what men knew nothing about Performers: Marija Misevičiūtė Jurgis Lietunovas Duration: 6 min F: If my memory doesn t wholy deceive me M: Jeigu atmintis manęs neapgauna S: 2 X FLUTE F: I am M: Aš esu siela klajojanti tarp dviejų S: Pasaulių S: Un autre monde M: Bet žmones apie tai nieko nežinos F: What men knew nothing about* F: Two suns are moving into one M: Dvi saulės susilieja į vieną^ F: Radikalus parašiuto hermafrodito S: Geidulys S: Lėtai krekantis S: Ieškantis glamonių^ S: Radical desire of the parachute S: Hermaphrodite S: Slowly falling* S: To look for caresse M: Proto viduje F: Inside the mind* S: FLUTE 1 X S: Thousand little men are possessing my body S: Mano kūnas yra apsėstas tūkstančio S: Mažų žmogelių^ F: The sun has for years spoken F: Revealing herself as a living being M: Saulė visą laiką kalbėjo^ M: Atsiskleisdama kaip gyva būtybė^ S: Naked* M: Papuošta spalvingais kaspinais F: Adorned with colourful ribbons F: Mirrored hearts F: Covert F: Entwined M: Atsispindinčios širdys^ M: Paslėptos^ M: Susipynusios^ S: Standstill memory stones S: & longing lips* S: FLUTE 1 X M: Neįmanomi klajokliai^ M: Impossible dwellings S: At this moment* S: Intensly lost S: Visiškai Pasimetę^ F: Spill over and disappear S: FLUTE 1 X M: Neįvardijama yra amžinai tikra^ F: The unnameable is the eternal real S: Understanding* M: Suprantanti^ F: Lucide F: Magic* S: The state of limbo S: Klajojanti tarp dviejų pasaulių^ S: FLUTE 2X F: Somewhere*not here* S: Kažkure ne čia^ M: Kažkure ne čia^ 11/15
Performance CONCRETE INTERIOR Jan 31 th and 7th February, 2016 Choreography: Jennifer Tee and Miri Lee Dancer: Miri Lee Duration: 10 min During her yearlong residency at ISCP in New York City in 2012, Tee created a choreography for ISCP s Open Studios presentation with Korean dancer Miri Lee. The piece was performed on the rooftop of the Dutch residency apartment on Beaver Street in Manhattan. In the past, Tee has worked on several knitted floorpieces with New Yorkbased artisan Sahara Briscoe. For this new work, they hand dyed the wool themselves. Creating a contrast between the object and movement, dancer Lee limned the beams of the crystalline octagonal form, enclosing an interior, psychological space. The piece was inspired by What Is Possible (1980) a poem by American poet, essayist, and feminist Adrienne Rich on the desire for an untroubled, clear mind. 12/15
Performance CONCRETE INTERIOR Jan 31 th and 7th February, 2016 Choreography: Jennifer Tee and Miri Lee Dancer: Miri Lee Duration: 10 min 13/15
Performance THE ORACLE CLUB Reading from Marcel Proust s Swann s Way February 14, 2016, 8 10:30 pm Performed for the second time The Oracle Club was an intimate evening event within the context of the exhibition The Soul in Limbo. Tee s handwoven Violamine Crystalline Floorpieces saw their metaphoric potential as vessels fulfilled by serving as the setting for an informal reading. As audience members reclined on the color segments of the floorpieces, six selected readers read aloud from Marcel Proust s Swann s Way. Published a little over a hundred years ago, it was the first volume of what was to become his sevenvolume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927). While the narrator in Swann s Way attempts to recapture and understand his past, the workings of his own consciousness, and one s individual identity construction, The Oracle Club had more modest a unique setting in which to contemplate memory and the passing of time. I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life. 14/15
Performance THE ORACLE CLUB Reading from Marcel Proust s Swann s Way February 14, 2016, 8 10:30 pm p. 5: For a long time / p. 7: parts of my ego : Annabel Howland p. 7: Perhaps the immobility / p. 10: for the first time : Jane Lewty p. 11: Riding at a jerky trot / p. 14: an involuntary tear :Jean Baptiste Maitre p. 14: My sole consolation / p. 16 Faubourg Saint-Germain: Hilde de Bruijn p. 16: Our utter ignorance / p. 19: to which we listen : Bastien Gachet p. 19: And so, no doubt / p. 21: he ordinarily moved : Jane Lewty p. 21: But on one occasion / p. 26: to appear pedantic: Wade Geary p. 26: And then, in the gilt / p. 29 Quatre Fils Amon : Annabel Howland p. 26: In this particular instance / p. 32: in the garden : Jane Lewty p. 32: But after a few seconds / p. 34: go and undress : Jean Baptiste Maitre p. 35: My mother opened / p. 37: off to your own : Hilde de Bruijn p. 37: And thus for the first / p. 40: the realms of time : Bastien Gachet p. 37: Mamma sat down / p. 43 ourselves must die : Jane Lewty p. 43: Many years had / p. 46: cup of tea : Wade Geary 15/15