THRXSOME PART 3
DOMESTIC OPTIMISM
Domestic Optimism is a multi faceted project about mangled and mistold modernist legacies. The project begins with furniture, inanimate objects that come loaded with social connections and invisible histories. Through the displacement of cultural detritus Emma Wolf-Haugh retells modernist architectural history in the collective key of queer, feminist and decolonial practices, continually unearthing filth in times of hygiene, and complicating things that were never simple to begin with.
Colonial aesthetics, obscenity trials, hysterical masculinity, crime scene photography, sexology, the production of the lesbian throughout modernity and the current collapse of social housing projects, all intersect in a critical, queer, working class reading of architectural and design modernism. The project underscores the importance of solidarity, friendship and collectivity, for our communion and survival in the world today.
exhibition // video // workshop // perfomative presentation // conversation // instant publishing // work in public space
#AUTOTHEORY #QUEER COLLECTIVITY #WORKING CLASS UTOPIAS #MALE HYSTERIA #CORBUSIER WAS A FASCIST #DOMESTIC DECADENCE #EILEEN GRAY’S FRIENDS & LOVERS #LESBIAN SCENIUS #MODERNISM COLONIALISM
Domestic Optimism
Act One - Modernism, a lesbian love story
Video 38.00Written, performed and edited by Emma Wolf-Haugh, filmed by Louis Haugh. Supported by The Grazer Kunstverein, Project Arts Centre, Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Fingal Arts Office and The Arts Council of Ireland.
“Welcome
Do take a seat and question
this chair's connection to imperialist obsession
with domination
its legacy and preservation
Emulation
Implication
Masturbation
Flagellation
Subordination
Domestication”
Domestic Optimism
Act One - Modernism, a lesbian love story
Exhibition 2020
At the Grazer Kunstverein
Part of the Steirischer Herbst Parallell Program 2020
Curated by Kate Strain
Photographs by Christine Winkler & Thomas Raggam
Reception Room · Set Pieces – series of seven cutout reproductions of selected campaign furniture and modernist Eileen Gray pieces, board, found images, flames, produced at Grazer Kunstverein, 2020
Main Gallery
Modernist furniture for dyke homes – Wallpaper #1 – Bibendum Chair by Eileen Gray, Alt Treptow, 2019
Modernist furniture for dyke homes – Wallpaper #2 – Coiffeuse by Eileen Gray, Schöneberg – created in collaboration with Kerstin Honeit, also displayed on city billboard at Ökonomiegasse 9, 2020
Modernist furniture for dyke homes – Wallpaper #3 – Transat Chair by Eileen Gray, Kreuzberg – created in collaboration with Line Skywalker Karlström, also displayed on city billboard at Ökonomiegasse 9, 2020
Soft Modular, After Eileen Gray’s Block Screens #1, fifteen panel hanging textile screen, bleached denim, recycled 90’s tracksuit pants, badges, metal components, produced on residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), 2019
Soft Modular, After Eileen Gray’s Block Screens #2, fifteen panel hanging textile screen, screenprinted denim, collaged denim jackets, embroidery, badges, paint, metal components, produced on residency at IMMA for the exhibition Seized by the Left Hand at Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2019
Soft Modular, After Eileen Gray’s Block Screens #3, fifteen panel hanging textile screen, bleached denim, recycled 90’s tracksuit pants, embroidery, badges, metal components, produced on residency at IMMA, 2020
An Abominable Little Perversion, A4 zine in English, 32 pages, full colour, produced with Market Gallery, Glasgow, as part of a remote Reading Troupe workshop Domestic Decadence, in collaboration with the participants, published by Grazer Kunstverein, 2020. Displayed in customized concrete structures
Domestic Optimism Script, A5 zine containing full script of video, in English and German, published by Grazer Kunstverein, 2020. Displayed in customized concrete structures
Screening Room Domestic Optimism, Act One: Modernism –
A Lesbian Love Story, looped video, running time 36’17”, coproduced by Grazer Kunstverein and Project Arts Centre, Dublin, with additional support from The Arts Council of Ireland, Fingal Co. Co. and Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Translations by Suza Husse, filmed by Louis Haugh at Askeaton Swimming Club, 2020
List of works
Reception Room · Set Pieces – series of seven cutout reproductions of selected campaign furniture and modernist Eileen Gray pieces, board, found images, flames, produced at Grazer Kunstverein, 2020
Main Gallery
Modernist furniture for dyke homes – Wallpaper #1 – Bibendum Chair by Eileen Gray, Alt Treptow, 2019
Modernist furniture for dyke homes – Wallpaper #2 – Coiffeuse by Eileen Gray, Schöneberg – created in collaboration with Kerstin Honeit, also displayed on city billboard at Ökonomiegasse 9, 2020
Modernist furniture for dyke homes – Wallpaper #3 – Transat Chair by Eileen Gray, Kreuzberg – created in collaboration with Line Skywalker Karlström, also displayed on city billboard at Ökonomiegasse 9, 2020
Soft Modular, After Eileen Gray’s Block Screens #1, fifteen panel hanging textile screen, bleached denim, recycled 90’s tracksuit pants, badges, metal components, produced on residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), 2019
Soft Modular, After Eileen Gray’s Block Screens #2, fifteen panel hanging textile screen, screenprinted denim, collaged denim jackets, embroidery, badges, paint, metal components, produced on residency at IMMA for the exhibition Seized by the Left Hand at Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2019
Soft Modular, After Eileen Gray’s Block Screens #3, fifteen panel hanging textile screen, bleached denim, recycled 90’s tracksuit pants, embroidery, badges, metal components, produced on residency at IMMA, 2020
An Abominable Little Perversion, A4 zine in English, 32 pages, full colour, produced with Market Gallery, Glasgow, as part of a remote Reading Troupe workshop Domestic Decadence, in collaboration with the participants, published by Grazer Kunstverein, 2020. Displayed in customized concrete structures
Domestic Optimism Script, A5 zine containing full script of video, in English and German, published by Grazer Kunstverein, 2020. Displayed in customized concrete structures
Screening Room Domestic Optimism, Act One: Modernism –
A Lesbian Love Story, looped video, running time 36’17”, coproduced by Grazer Kunstverein and Project Arts Centre, Dublin, with additional support from The Arts Council of Ireland, Fingal Co. Co. and Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Translations by Suza Husse, filmed by Louis Haugh at Askeaton Swimming Club, 2020
︎e-flux
Modernist Furniture for Lesbian Homes
Billboards 2020Collaboration with Kerstin Honeit and Line Skywalker KarlströmPart of The Grazer Kunstverein is Moving and in tandem with Domestic Optimism exhibition, 2020. Curated by Kate Strain and Edward Clydesdale Thompson.
‘In advance of a solo exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein in Autumn 2020, Emma Wolf-Haugh takes Grazer Kunstverein to the streets with a billboard campaign around the central district of Lend. Large-scale, collaboratively made, photographic works linked to Wolf-Haugh's wider project Domestic Optimism are displayed in the poster slots usually reserved for advertisements. Displacing private domestic interiors (fusing past and present) to the public sphere the billboards are part of a continuing engagement with spatial politics and queer women’s invisibility. Wolf-Haugh’s artistic practice often involves (re)inserting and (re)appropriating narratives and histories that are otherwise overlooked, obscured, written out, or deleted. ‘
︎eflux
The Grazer Kunstverein is Moving
Conversation with Edward Clydesdale Thomson 2020This project was part of the ongoing public program Grazer Kunstverein is moving! - a feasibility study aimed at speculatively re-locating the institution. This performative public program unfolds alongside a continuous exhibition program, as a companion series of ephemeral events in test sites across the seventeen districts of the city of Graz.
Video: Schubidu Quartet In cooperation with Kulturjahr 2020.