Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1115758
THIS WEEK ART maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 MAY 2019 6 Ukraine-born, Malta-based visual artist Letta Shtohryn speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about her participation in the currently-ongoing collective exhibition Object, Objetc, Objecc, on display at Spazju Kreattiv and also featuring the work of Liza Eurich (Canada) and Katri Kempas (Finland), her fellow participants at the SIM Residency in Reykjavik, Iceland Could you tell us a little bit about what the SIM Residency in Reykjavik entailed, and the fruitful collaboration that seems to have arisen out of it? SIM is run by the Association of Ice- landic Artists. For us, it was a space of encounter with a different envi- ronment, harsh nature, and way too many hours of daylight in May 2017. During the residency, we all worked on our own and very different pro- jects, but closer to the end, when we saw each other's work, the idea ap- peared that it would be interesting to do a group show, seeing as we worked with abstract concepts of spatiality, experiences and modes of refusal. What were some of the common thematic/aesthetic concerns that led you to continue collaborating with the international group of artists that makes up 'Object, Objetc, Objecc', and how did the parameters of the exhibition begin to shape up? After the end of our residency, we started a group messenger chat where we came up with an idea of a project that uses three different visions on objectness as an interpretation tool for the process of communication that became the core of the project. We started sending each other prompts, texts, links and screenshots that responded to each other's mate- rial. This became the basis for creating artworks on the material we circu- lated among each other. Object, Objetc, Objecc became a process of associative translation, a mutation in a DNA chain, a growing email thread that doesn't seek to stick to the theme of the conversation. It changed with every message, becom- ing something new for each artist. What is at the root of the concern about 'objectness' that lies at the core of the exhibition, and how did it tangibly manifest in the works themselves? Each of us considers objectness from a different perspective, forming unique responses based on our own practices. Liza Eurich's work focuses on this thematic through juxtapositions be- tween text and object, investigating the permeability and transience of language, as well as how this might exist within a physical space. In this exhibition, text manifests in various formats: as recycled didactic panel, cast book, signage and postal notification. Katri Kempas works with experiences and found objects that she uses to create narratives. I work at an intersection of digital and material, looking at the relation- ship between digital technology and the place of humans in a world in- creasingly governed by algorithms. These views shaped our exploration into objectness. For example, I looked at death in the crypto world, explor- ing an encounter with something very material in a world operating on a purely digital and a semi-abstract premise of belief; Liza investigated not only the relationship between where objects are made and where they are displayed, but also how they are transported between these two realms; and Katri responded by shar- ing her encounters in poetry that shaped narratives via the surface of pressed fabric. This project would not have hap- Teodor Reljic Stop taking it so personally