We are delightful to welcome London-based artist Caroline Ip, and Shanghai-based artist Jill Zheng joining the OPEN HOUSE program at Schubertstrasse, Zurich from 14 September to 6 October, 2024.
The OPEN HOUSE program The Invisible Trajectory explores the intricate dynamics of migrant communities within modern urban environments, shaped by histories of migration and the interplay of personal and public spaces. In today’s cities, characterized by fluid population movements influenced by local histories, economies, and politics, mobile figures—ranging from first-generation migrants seeking survival to second and third-generation immigrants—forge connections that blend nostalgia for their homeland with a growing sense of belonging to their adopted locales. These journeys are not merely geographical; they encompass cultural and linguistic adaptations that define the subjectivity of mobile communities in urban public and private spheres.
During the period we will have:
Open House – two workshops and sharing led by Caroline Ip and Jill Zheng on 4 and 5 October, 2024.
Feel free to join us while you are in the Zurich this Autumn.
About artist:
Caroline Ip is an artist and facilitator based in London, whose practice brings together interests in diasporic culture, storytelling, and archives, considering the processes through which our identities are constructed and contested.
Drawn to hand-sewing, perhaps in part due to ancestral connections to the textiles industries in Lancashire and China, this technique has become a medium through which Caroline explores her own mixed heritage and nurtures collective dialogue and storytelling in community spaces. Her artistic process centres a tactile relationship with materials, utilising recycled and second-hand fabrics alongside found objects and ephemera, with a curiosity into the role of sensory memory in shaping our cultural identities.
Caroline’s work has been featured in group exhibitions, including at Copeland Gallery, Indra Gallery, and The Bath House, London. She holds an MA in Art History and International Relations from the University of St Andrews and an MA in Curating Art and Public Programmes from Whitechapel Gallery and LSBU, and she co-curated the 2023-24 exhibition It All Starts With a Thread at Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Workshop introduction
Carry Me Home During the Artist in Residency and Open House at Schubertstrasse in Zurich, Caroline will invite visitors to consider how textiles shape our sense of belonging and comfort, creating keepsakes that embody a feeling of home.
Expanding the notion of home as a static place, this workshop will be an opportunity to explore the house on Schubertstrasse and the objects within it as a multisensory, ever-changing archive – holding stories of those who have lived here, those who visit, and those who may call it home in the future.
Whether the clothes we wear, fabrics which furnish our buildings, or the soft toys we played with as children, textiles play a significant role in our lives. They carry profound meanings, reflecting cultural heritages, connections to loved ones, and the stains, worn patches, and scents that accumulate through use.
In this session, we will explore how home is created through these sensory memories. Using hand-stitching techniques, you’ll create your own small textile artwork, weaving in elements of your personal story alongside the narrative of the house, and creating a piece of home to carry with you!
– Open to all ages, and no sewing experience is required – the workshop will introduce basic stitching techniques, and will be an opportunity to respond to the collection of textiles in your own way.
– We invite you to bring textiles and objects with you to use which hold personal meaning (e.g. buttons, scraps of fabric from handed-down clothing) if you like, but we will have lots of fabric, haberdashery items and supplies available too, so this is not required.
Jill Zheng is a multimodal poet, who works with language as a primary material, oftentimes marrying modes of graphic arrangements, sound, image, translingualism, somatic experience, etc. Her poetic practice takes its inspirational roots from the concreteness of Chinese characters, and seeks to embody cultural hybridity as to traverse linguistic boundaries, for a new game of re-imagination and reading re-orientation. She also collaborates with visual and sound artists on multimedia poetry and sound-art performances in Shanghai.
Her works have appeared in Nationalpoetrymonth.ca, Poetry magazine (US), LIFE magazine (China), Paris Lit Up (Paris) etc., and anthologised by Seeing in Tongue (UK). Her latest works have recently been exhibited in Zari Gallery and Boomer Gallery in London.
Workshop introduction
Touching Space During the Artist Residency and Open House at Schubertstrasse in Zurich, Jill’s creative practice extends from the core conceptual notion of language to the meaning-making processes of sign—the worn objects, the dwelling memories, the network of relationship she co-built with people and space.
Jill’s poetry involves meaning fluidly residing in a variety of semiotic signs, be it language, image, smell, sound, and she will give insights into what led to her multimodal approach as well as her processes of creating the works in the sharing section.
‘Language is the ability to “touch” others, to relate to things, processes, emotions, individuals, and through this to turn them into something different.’ —— Andreas Weber
Experience the space of Schubertstrasse—former residence of Herianto Sulindro, Kho Family, and now-turned venue of the upcoming exhibition— through languaging. The objects you encounter and the movements of which this house’s design directs you are memories and poetry to be written. Space enfolds the past, present, and future; your presence will be merged into its memory-scape by the ability to ‘touch’ that language holds. We’ll learn how to produce a concrete poem that emerges from your interaction with the house.
細着藝術 SUAVEART 