Veriditas - The Mystical in Art
Exhibition Location: Tegnerforbundet
Exhibition Period: Spring 2023
Curatorial team: Esra Duzen, Anders Kvammen and Tanja Thorjussen
Application deadline: July 01, 2022, 23:59.
Veriditas is a word originating from Latin translated as greenness, fresh green color of plants, vegetation and youthful vigor. It is associated with Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) who used the word to describe spiritual and physical health in relation to the spiritual in nature. For the past years we have experienced a new growth in the spiritual in art. Artists are working with the mystical, magical and spiritual as both theme and method. The theme has been explored in many exhibitions and publications internationally and lately with the 59th Venice Biennale main exhibition The Milk of Dreams with a focus on surrealism and magic.
Pioneers in spiritual, surrealistic and abstract art, such as Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), Emma Kunz (1892-1963), Georgina Houghton (1814-1884), Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988 ) have finally received great international recognition. The history of art must be rewritten, and a greater spiritual perspective explored. In the wake of the renewed interests of overlooked pioneers which were active ca. 100 years ago, we have a new interest in the spiritual in art and an acceptance of this as a theme and work method. To express and have an alternative spiritual freedom is political, feminist and critical of society. Established power structures have throughout history suppressed these movements and portrayed these expressions as evil, crazy, hysterical and nonsense.
Historically, especially in the Spiritualist movement of the last century, drawing was central to explorations with automatic writing and drawing in trance as it was such a direct form of expression, but how is drawing used as a tool to express spirituality in contemporary art today? Witchcraft, astrology, tarot and spiritual life coaching are becoming more mainstream and are spread in social media taking on new forms.
We are curious to see how contemporary artists now use the spiritual as a theme and entry-point into their works. Why do we see a new blossoming of the spiritual now, and how does this unfold in the arts? Is the spiritual related to our relationship to earth and the fear of the anthropocene? Does it express a need to free ourselves from the patriarchal top-down monotheistic religions towards an earth centered spirituality?
In addition to drawings, we are open to mixed and other media including performance which relate to drawing and the theme in some way or form.
We hope that this can be an exhibition that reflects and explores the spiritual in contemporary art.
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The application for the open call must be submitted via Tegnerforbundet ' s application portal.
The application deadline is 1 July 2022, at 23:59.
The curatorial group will evaluate the submitted proposals in July 2022.
The application must contain:
Project description (max. 2000 characters with spaces), image material (max. 5 pcs) and CV.
