In an Exceptional Time

The final exhibition in this year is personal and individualistic, but is also open and full of questions. The school, their students, like all of us, have been going through an exceptional time. They have experienced a shift from closeness to distance, like a maturing process in a very short time. Many certitudes have started to erode, personal freedom seems to have become a counter-narration to concepts of care and responsibility. Security and personal resilience, not the big tales of adventure, have lately been the main stories of our lives. The meeting of species has shown to be riskful, yet nature has shown to be a place of restful certitude. Risk itself has become linked with high possible costs, not only personal but for our societies. The present seems to be divided between introspection and a research for ways-out, while a ghostlike presence of our lived past lingers in the new socialities defined by electronic means. All of this can be traced in the works presented, since art provides an aesthetical framework of the now, while having the possibilities to go further and provide images for the future. This exceptional time, in any way, will be a sort of hidden sub-text of the works presented. But there is also the trajectory of the individual practice of the students, and their openness to discuss their works which has brought them from very different places to the Master program in Umea. Provided by the academy they have also experienced what again has proven to be necessary for artistic work, the need for spaces to produce, the importance of exchange with workshops, craftspeople with insight about the specifics of material, the daily necessity of discourse with colleagues, and having the chance to engage with the works of others, and not at least an exchange with the public by having the chance to show and discuss their works. The approaches are individual, but this doesn't mean that they put up barriers of separation. Art is, also, communication.  It also tells us to trust our senses and build a collective image out of the reflected perceptions of young people who have put their energies and work into an old poetic and narrative system – art.

Ariane Müller