Stage 1:
~spatial hair~ was an assembly of works slowly growing in Dee's empty living room until February 4th, 2021, and beyond. The works and also the other rooms in Dee's home were then photographed with equal importance given by me on the day before Dee's departure from the Netherlands and her relocation to New Zeeland.
Host: Dieuwertje Hehewerth
Film development assistance: Jelle Baars
Stage 2:
Spatial hair: an intimate tornado at L’alcôve
Where to begin? Perhaps it would be fair to rewind back to Madrid 2018. I met Dee during a curatorial residency organized by Hablarenarte, where Madrid-based practitioners hosted residents in their homes and introduced them to the city. Sweet Home was the name of the program, and honestly, it would be fair to admit that I’ve never felt
less at home than during this residency. I met Dee though, and her approach to art practices and what I consider a relevant analysis of care and intimacy starts it all.
I remember us having a coffee and her showing me the projects she was working on at the time. I remember it all being very piratee; one of the projects, made with the vondelpark oceonographic society, consisting of replacing wall texts in museum exhibits with unapologetically incomprehensible texts, full of aphorisms, basically stating that meaning was not the major concern of the institution. At the time she was also involved in Plǝt-, an artist-run space which, much like L’alcôve, took place in her apartment in Amsterdam.
We stayed in touch after the residency, mostly by emails, and started a connivance that continues to this day.She invited me to curate a video show at Plǝt-, and I sent her feathers by airmail.
When she made the decision to move back to Aotearoa New Zealand, she pulled one last trick from her sleeve. Cleverly wrapped up under the title ~Spatial Hair~, she invited a number of friends to make one last artistic gesture in her living room before she left, which she would then sum up in a newsletter that would be sent out as the works and gestures gradually assembled. On the last day (or one of the very last days), Alina Lupu took a hundred and fifty photographs of the place as it was, a way to memorize and immortalize the passing of the time and this changing space that would never be again.
Alina then decided to turn the photographs into postcards and sent them to Dee, a collection we then decided could come back to Europe and land in L’alcôve, where they now slowly, one or two at a time, find a new suitable place to be shown for this limited period of time that represents the exhibition.
Without further ado, it is with great pleasure that L’alcôve presents one last installation of ~Spatial Hair~, an assembly of works that will never be complete, but may, as life does, move forward in unexpected ways.
clément gagliano