If She Wanted I Would Have Been There Once Twice Or Again Event

We are delighted to inform you about the a group exhibition curated by C-print, titled “If She Wanted I Would Have Been There Once Twice Or Again” on Friday, October 12, 7PM at Zeller van Almsick, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3, 1010 Vienna.

The works of the four Swedish artists Sofia Ekström, Josefina Malmegård, Jin Mustafa and Theresa Traore Dahlberg presented in “If She Wanted I Would Have Been There Once Twice or Again” departs from the common denominator of surveying a very private sphere or rapport with a geographical space or the physical and emotional distances between several such spaces.

Growing up with two photographer parents and with formative years arguably lived in front of the camera, figuratively and literally, for Sofia Ekström the notion of the family portrait studio finds itself as a recurring fixture throughout her body of work. Her archival installation of objects, photographs, authored texts and video is a mirror to the past and examines the subtleties of a divided relationship with her late father. In “Portrait of a Father” (fadersporträttet) she films a portrait session of her father sitting for her in front of the camera, letting the viewer in on the dynamics between two artists at a moment of mutual forte.

Theresa Traore Dahlberg’s work on view derives from an ongoing photographic series shot in Ouagadougou where she partially grew up herself. The frame establishes a social scenography set at daybreak where the time element is telling of a stage-in-between, marked by anticipation of a scene that is soon to be played out or perhaps captures the aftermath of one that already has occurred. It suggests and hints at interaction of a certain nature, of which there is visible trace, but no clear presence.

Jin Mustafa’s video “Untitled Streams” revolves around virtual and liminal spaces. The non-linear stream of imagery supports a narration hovering between the role of mediated communication to fill the voids of distance and the construct of memory. At a pivotal moment, the narrator recalls the ease with which a distant location from the past can vividly be visualized from the mind, noting subsequently the failure to do the same with a distinct road driven daily in the present of today.

Josefina Malmegård’s “Home” stresses how one’s quotidian abode can make for a subversive space if distorting the habitual. For the project she placed ads around the city, inviting male strangers to her home to perform domestic chores while being filmed. The work probes questions about the gendered gaze, perversion and privacy. All these various questions of when and why paradoxically evokes a near Hitchcockian suspense and tension amid an uneventful and slow course of action, prompting the viewer to wait for that one climactic moment to arrive.