Embrace
To embrace means to accept something or someone with great interest or enthusiasm. From the level of social interaction, it can be understood as an inclusive action, a step towards an equal society. However, this word also bears a more individual and emotional significance which refers to a simple yet meaningful gesture of holding someone tightly to express one's love, care, and support. This exhibition focuses on non-binary gender identities and gender equality. Revolving around the two meanings of "embrace," it explores different connections between collective and individual experiences of members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

The presented artworks reach into history and reflect on the present and critically investigate physical as well as virtual spaces. The artists reveal the capitalist or nationalist mechanisms of societal formatting and the systemic violence inherent to these processes. Simultaneously, they propose new forms of nonviolent resistance that pass through the revision of existing norms, the reinterpretation of history, and put local contexts into a global perspective of reflection on gender identity and equality.

This exhibition embraces the various dimensions of visual and political resistance that Polish and German artists implement in their artistic and social practices in order to raise awareness for gender inequalities and non-binary identities. (1) As its third project edition, Embrace Platform is coming to Pawilon in Poznan, Poland. The exhibition revolves around the topics of cross-identities, gender equality and normalizing non-binary identities in society. This third edition is dedicated to the visibility of women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights and freedoms, and the question of how alliances against oppression and disinformation can continue to operate.
The exhibition features invited queer Polish artists and German artists with biographical connections to Karlsruhe and Hannover in Germany where the first two editions of Embrace Platform took place.

While representing a wide range of topics and media, the selected artworks all engage in a creative conversation with each other through the exhibition at Pawilon. The contribution of Liliana Zeic Gently running downwards is a result of two years of research focused on analyzing the language of the extreme right and how its rhetoric blends religious, militant, and patriotic attitudes and how this impacts developments of prolonged stress in societal groups that are rhetorically targeted. The two-channel video installation is a collage of voices, testimonies and quotes collected by the artist. The audience is led through this polyphony of voices by images from recordings of learning folk children games.

Karol Radziszewski provides an insight into his filmic ouvre through the film Mon chéri Soviétique, which is made of hundreds of photographs. The story is about the last Soviet soldiers leaving Poland in the 1990s, it focuses on the figure of the soldier who is not fighting but takes off his uniform in front of the camera. Radziszewski supplements historical photographs with contemporary film material in which he reenacts past events.

The projects of Charlotte Eifler focus on the world of invisible systems and algorithms which control virtual spaces, but also operate throughout our non-digital lives. “Videos by Eifler address the notion of the grid seen as an omnipresent structure or pattern of dominance, often assimilated with white male power and univocal classifications that rule the world. She imagines a post-digital world in which female protagonists try to resist the grid, destroy or deform it by introducing ambiguities and fluidity as an opposition to the static understanding of identity and representation”. (1)

The Video score Installation "...seemingly impossible duet ..." by Tubi Malcharzik is dedicated to queer childhood experiences and memories. It draws upon a drag performance that Tubi Malcharzik put on in the sports hall of their elementary school. In a game of holding on tight to memories and fictionalization, a picture puzzle of queer childhood experiences comes into focus. The video score is not a recording of the original staging, but a possible translation into digital space. It invites viewers to synchronize and imagine a seemingly impossible duet which can never be captured in a photograph.

Relationships and queer identity are also the subject of Karolina Sobel's textiles based on her photography project exploring the situation of the LGBTQIA+ community in Poland, especially lesbians, who still are overlooked in Polish society and culture. Finally, the live contribution in the format of a lecture performance would be added by Kerstin Möller and Karolina Sobel which highlights increasing violence against women, female-identifying bodies and femicides. Violence against women is also the theme of a sound art installation by Kerstin Möller.

Fiona Mcgovern will lead a roundtable discussion devoted to alliances, cooperation and the highlighting of women’s and LGBTQIA+rights advocated for in artworks. The opening evening on Friday, the 15th of September, will be celebrated with DJ sets by Eduarda Bones with Aspen and aua&angst(soft spot).

(1)Original text excerpt of the Text “Embrace” by Dr. Ewelina Chwiejda, the text was written for the opening of the exhibition “Embrace” at Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, Germany in 2022.