Vanessa Safavi
VELVET
April 24, 2020–May 15, 2020The Breeder Viewing Room
“Are we living the dream of the human and the machine working together along with the repetitive sounds of mechanics mass producing sanitary gloves for global industries? The phantom-like hands are certainly the vehicle for a ”Nachleben” feeling—an unconscious memory transcending time, a phantom embodied in the shape of a hand, drawing the most ancient-looking imprint of humanity and thus bringing up layers of unconscious narratives we share collectively. It is all very impersonal.”
Vanessa Safavi on Velvet
The Breeder is pleased to present the online premier of Vanessa Safavi’ s film “VELVET”.
Velvet offers an immersion in a small Indian company specialized in the manufacture of latex gloves. Physical and symbolic bodies meet in the industry space, questioning with poetry the identity of the contemporary body and its allegiance to technological optimization. Velvet is a continuation of the artist research around the materialities that compose her work and confront them with the reality of the factory and of mass production.
The recent spread of the COVID19 Pandemic and the necessity of disposable protective latex gloves that became rapidly widespread around the world, makes Velvet a must-seen film about the alienated and dystopian reality of our global markets.
Safavi’s ongoing research around rubber materials is an investigation into the history of the human body. In her work, she often creates an analogy between these pliable, soft materials and the body and the skin. For Safavi, the complexion of the skin is a fundamental creator of identity and deeply rooted in a cultural history. In this way, when cultural history changes, the same happens to the understanding of our body and thus to the value of our skin. Using conceptual systems of language and a personal narrative, Safavi explores and inquires after the contemporary identity of the body in relation to the constant optimization of technologies and their cultural impacts in our hyperorganized society. This mechanism has unequivocally driven society to a new sphere of identity, in addition to a complex, vulnerable and schizophrenic fragility. To this end, Safavi’s work recalls the weakness of our bodies, along with the poetry that emerges from them.
Of Iranian and Swiss descent Vanessa Safavi was born in 1980 in Lausanne, Switzerland. She lives and works between Berlin and Switzerland. Her most recent solo exhibition include The Approach, (Condo London with The Breeder Athens), London, “Turns and Returned” The Breeder, Athens (2018), “The Cook and the Smoke Detector”, ChertLüdde, Berlin (2017), “Medullla Plaza”, Kunstverein Grafschaft, Bentheim (2016), “Amygdala”, The Breeder Playroom, Athens (2015), “Airbags”, MOTINTERNATIONAL, Brussels (2015), “cloud metal cities”, Kunsthalle São Paulo, Sao Paolo (2014), “La Nuit Liquide”, The Breeder, Athens (2014); “Οne Torino“, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2013), Kunsthaus Glarus, “After the Monument Comes the People”, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2012), “I Wish Blue could be Water”, CRAC Alsace (2012), “Les Figures Autonomes”, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2011).Vanessa Safavi is a recipient of the 2012 Illy Present/Future Prize and has exhibited internationally since 2010.
Selected group shows: Notes sur l’empathie, group show curated by Charlotte Laubard, Fondation Ricard, Paris, FRI-ART Kunsthalle (film premiere), Fürstenbergischen Sammlungen Museum Donaueschingen, Garage Rotterdam (group show), Objects like us, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, USA (2018), Meaning can only grow out of intimacy (Limbs, Water, Nostalgia), curated by Elise Lammer, Les Urbaines – 20th edition, Lausanne (2016), Che il vero possa confutare il falso, AgiVerona Collection, Palazzo Pubblico/Santa Maria della Scala/Accademia dei Fisiocritici, Sienna, curated by Luigi Fassi and Alberto Salvadori (2016), Inflected Objects # 2 Circulation – Mise en Séance, Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem, Netherlands (2016), The transparent tortoiseshell and the unripe umbrella, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow (2016), Swiss Art Awards, Basel (2015), milk revolution, curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, American Academy, Rome (2015), Emmy Moore’s Journal.
Vanessa Safavi
Velvet, 2019,
HD video, color, sound 12:00 mins
ed of 3 +1AP
original music by Ariel Garcia and Luc Müller
Images by Xavier Ripolles and Vanessa Safavi
Produced by Vanessa Safavi with the generous support of Fonds Culturel Fribourg Switzerland
