Wrangle, Wrap, Wring

Drawing from our diverse cultural backgrounds, we aim to enrich the Southland community in New Zealand through workshops and an interactive exhibition. Our vision for the exhibition is to create a mixed-media installation where we encourage our audience to reflect on their own patterns, beliefs, and responses to contemporary challenges and traumas, both real and imagined. We aim to achieve this by expressing disorientation, adaptation, and shifting perspectives, while speculating on ways to challenge dominant systems and perspectives. Through this process, we reflect on the interplay of cultural codes, authorship, and visual culture across diverse landscapes, actively involving audiences in the disorienting process of navigating fragmented systems. Our installation will have several components, including drawing, painting, audio, video, sculpture, and textiles.

Our collective is an international and multidisciplinary group of artists, most of whom have diasporic and cross-disciplinary artistic backgrounds. Our collective builds mixed media installations that integrate our skills in animation, film, dance, audio, and visual art. We also draw from our experience in peace activism, humanities research, and new technology. We intertwine these concepts in experimental ways, switching between the lenses of different mediums and disciplines to transform and pull apart ideas. 

Where we are exhibiting: Art Attic Gallery is an artist-run contemporary project space and charitable trust located at 43 Tay Street in central Invercargill. Art Attic’s mission is to empower and support artists and to provide wellbeing to creative communities in Southland Murihiku and further Aotearoa.

Artists:

Nemanja Bošković (Serbia) Contemporary Dance  - Informal education in contemporary dance.

Alex Close (Canada) Visual Art/Painting - Master of Design in Industrial Design Research - Carleton University (Canada) / Master of Letters in Fine Art Practice Specializing in Painting - Glasgow School of Art (UK) / Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting - Ontario College of Art and Design University (Canada) 

Nour Hassan (New Zealand) Visual Art/Drawing - Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design - Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design (New Zealand) / Diploma in Arts in History - Massey University (New Zealand)

Lida Sherafatmand (Malta) Visual Art/Drawing, Peace Activism - Master of Arts in International Relations - University of Malta (Malta) / Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, minor in History of Art - University of Malta (Malta)

Carlos Alejandro (USA) Video & New Media Art - Master of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Communications - University of Houston (US) / Bachelor of Art degree in Graphic Design - Cal State San Bernardino (US)

We are raising money to help us with accomodation in Invercargill. 

Having financial support for accomodation will ensure that our international members are able to make it to New Zealand in person to be able to deliver workshops across the Southland region. In-person activities are critical to the impact of our work.

Exhibition & Workshop Goals

Through exhibiting our mixed-media installation, we aim to create a transformative experience that encourages dialogue and reflection on the value of images and materials. By integrating local found objects, we bridge our global perspectives with the unique context of the Southland region, resulting in an innovative and dynamic exhibition.

Our project will also deliver opportunities for local communities to engage with, and participate in activities centered around contemporary art and challenging perspectives. These workshops will be available to community members of all ages (from children to seniors), though participation will be limited to around 10-16 people for each workshop or artist talk. We aim to have 4 workshops/artist talks in each location. Experience in fine art is not required for participation.

Significance of Location

Presenting our work in New Zealand will be significant for our practice as a collective for several reasons. Our varied backgrounds and mobility prompt discussions on critical current issues, such as integration, cross-cultural barriers, visual culture, and future social dynamics. Learning from the social environment in New Zealand, which includes Indigenous, colonial, and immigrant histories, will enrich our approach to our collaborative practice. This is a relevant time to explore these topics, as New Zealand's cultural dynamics are evolving, with Maori culture increasingly recognized and celebrated as an integral part of society.

Relevance of Timing

As a collective that formed while we were all living in the Balkans and has since dispersed, this is an important opportunity to engage in discussions on cultural identity, displacement, and code-switching (changing how you communicate in different contexts), which are heightened by global migration and cross-cultural interactions. We have not exhibited or done any projects in New Zealand before, and this will add perspective to our experiences navigating complex, overlapping histories and codes in the Balkans. Nour and Alex, having grown up in Commonwealth countries (New Zealand and Canada, respectively), aim to understand how our practice fits into the future dynamics of these places and what it means for us as descendants of immigrants returning temporarily to the West.

This exhibition will give us the opportunity to connect to local communities in the Southland region and develop spaces for cross-cultural exchange in contemporary art in areas that might lack access. These connections will expand our collective's capabilities, fostering future exhibitions, collaborations, and cultural events in New Zealand and beyond. Since our collective is new, this is also a pivotal opportunity for us to present our work at a larger scale together. So far, we have worked in unconventional spaces with few resources, found materials, and tight timeframes. This exhibition will provide us with the time and space to refine our artistic vision and align on collective goals by creating a finished body of work.