Senya Corda, Kinship

Gletta, 05 - 22 June, 2022

Opening: 5 June, 12pm / Open daily 12 - 4pm

Nobody can be kin to everything, but our kin networks can be full of attachment sites.

I feel like the need for the care across generations is urgent, and it cannot be just a humanist affair.

(Donna Haraway)

When I try to put Senya Corda’s work into words, the first terms that come to mind are these: sensibility, slowness, collaboration, care, and consciousness. What these terms have in common–aside from the fact that they all begin with either an S or a C, which I promise is coincidence–is that they are all elements of what Donna Haraway calls making kin, namely nurturing an "enduring mutual, obligatory, non-optional"^[1] relatedness with the human and more-than-human world. This form of kinship might include, but more often goes beyond blood family ties, and carries with it an ethical responsibility. Seeking Kinship is, in my opinion, at the very heart of Senya’s practice and a more than apt title for the series of works on display.

Taken during a journey along the coast of Cornwall (UK), the photographs curiously capture the various textures, surfaces, and materials of the rough landscape as well as of the two bodies moving through and within it: Skin on cold, wet grass; dripping mud; the sharp edges of a rock polished by the sea. These images evoke a sense of touch, in the meaning of both a physical encounter and of feeling humbled, overwhelmed, and connected. That the naked body features so prominently here is not so much an indication of a romantic, even naïve, desire to return to a supposedly pure, natural state. This is not to say that the desire to show beauty plays no role here. But since an important part of the process is that Senya builds a trusting relationship with her often female subjects and explores this relationship with and through the camera, the tenderness with which the bodies–with all their marks and wrinkles–are depicted is above all an expression of a genuine, deeply felt affection and respect.

^[1] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/making-kin-an-interview-with-donna-haraway/.

For this exhibition, the Kinship series receives new sculptural elements: The prints were drawn on copper plates, a heat-conducting and light-reflecting material sensitive to changes in the surrounding atmosphere. The plates, in turn, are supported by stones collected on site and are held and enclosed by "rammed earth" frames. Made from compacted natural raw materials gathered on the journey from Reykjavík to the exhibition site in Borgarfjördur, and using an ancient and indeed laborious construction technique, these frames connect the photographs to their local exhibition context and also add a less permanent, ever-changing material component, just as the photographs themselves are products of the changing natural conditions in which they were created. In this sense, the exhibited works can be seen not only as documentations of very consciously shared time and space, but also as "attachment sites" themselves, where the human and more-than-human worlds meet and become entangled with mutual care.

Text: Marie Sophie Beckmann

Supported by: NEUSTART KULTUR, STIFTUNG KUNSTFONDS