Output details

Yet

Yet was a site-specific installation, which was generated in response to an invitation from the critic and curator Pilvi Kalhama. The exhibition combined eighteen paintings with elements such as chairs, tape, words and pigment that connected the paintings to the physical world; the deployment of ideal modernist forms within the installation established a link to the surrounding architectural space.

The paintings and accompanying wall text incorporated peremptory phrases from the letters of two modernist writers: Franz Kafka and Rosa Luxemburg. The underpinning research investigated the construction of artistic identity through the process of making and art’s ‘inhabitation’ of the world. The exhibition was reviewed in Helsingin Sanomat (Finland’s main newspaper) and Hufvvdstadsbladet (the main Swedish-language newspaper) under the title Fibsofisk gympasal (Philosophical Gym) in reference to the thematic layers within the installation.

The ideas informing the exhibition were developed through a series of symposia on The Construction of an Identity in Artistic Practice, which was held over three successive years at the Royal Academy Schools and Goldsmiths in London and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (2007-2009). Speakers at the first symposium included Professor Irit Rogoff and Professor Kosfsky Sedgwick and Chevska’s work formed part of the accompanying exhibition called Who’s on First? For her contribution to the third symposium, Chevska gave a lecture at Kalhama & Piippo.

A selection of paintings from the exhibition were shown by Kalhama & Piippo as part of an exhibition of eight Finnish and international artists at the former Savonlinna Art Museum in 2008. A book documenting work by the artists and theorists who participated in the symposium series was published in 2011 under the title Identity/Identiteetti (ISBN 9780956911605).