Inside/outside: Reveries
About the exhibition
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Inside/outside: Reveries, a collaboration between Abu Dhabi- based artists Kasia Dzikowska and Sharon Lindenfeld, was created while in isolation during the spring of 2020, in the midst of the COVD-19 pandemic. The artworks in this exhibition explore the experience of lockdown and the yearning to connect with the world beyond one’s window. A year later, this exhibition reflects on the artists’ experience.
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Both artists, who live down the street from each other, created a series of works based on ‘the view outside’, generating diaries of their daily visual experiences. In this exhibition, viewers will experience the perspective of two artists’ different views of the same city street through their windows. Both projects are intended to be presented in grid format, to explore the feeling of repetition and time passing and to reflect the gridded shapes of Abu Dhabi’s windows. A viewer will be able to follow along as the works will be displayed in chronological order.
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Exhibition Statement
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“We are vastly underprepared for the personal and collective mental health consequences of the last year.” Katie MacBride
I don’t personally know Katie MacBride. But when that statement came across my Twitter feed, it resonated. Hard. And, for me, it connects firmly with the artworks that Kasia and Sharon produced during the COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020.
My mother was born at the height of the Great Depression. During World War II she was the age my daughter is now. She carried the marks of those events throughout her life, evidenced in her frugality, her acceptance of scarcity, her embrace of loss and grief. What we live, marks us, indelibly.
Marks, and the making of them, are what Kasia and Sharon offer here as a reflection on both the individual and collective experience of isolation that the world experienced in 2020…and that, to a certain extent, carries through to the present day. Their prints, paintings and drawings are touchstones, talismans, that offer a passageway back to spring 2020 and a way forward into a new form of reflection, of reverie.
We don’t know the consequences of the past year. We can be fairly certain, however, that art will continue to help us record, process and remember them.
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Sabrina DeTurk
Sharon Lindenfeld's work
Sharon Lindenfeld is an Abu Dhabi-based printmaker who makes large scale etchings that depict abstract landscapes. She earned her MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University-Bloomington, a BA from Dartmouth College, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Her prints have been exhibited internationally including at venues in Egypt, the USA, UK, Poland, China, and Italy. She has held artist residencies at the Santa Reparata International School of Art (Italy), Seacourt Centre for Contemporary Printmaking (Northern Ireland), the Women’s Studio Workshop (NY, USA) and the Newark Print Shop (NJ, USA).
Before moving to the Middle East, Sharon worked under Master Printers in New York City, on fine art editions for artists such as Julie Mehretu, Mickalene Thomas, Alex Katz, and Chuck Close. She currently teaches Visual Arts at Zayed University and has previously taught at a variety of institutions ranging from small colleges to large state universities to a maximum security prison.
Kasia Dzikowska's work
Kasia Dzikowska is an Abu Dhabi-based artist. Born in Poland, she earned her MFA in fine arts at UTH Radom in 2007. Thereafter, she based her arts practice in the UK, and became an art educator in 2009, currently teaching Fine Art and Graphic Design at Zayed University.
In 2013, Kasia moved to the Middle East where she has been living ever since. Her work has been displayed at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi and she was awarded 1st Place in the Ras Al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival for her series ‘Notice me’. Her work has also been exhibited internationally, including in the UK, USA, UAE and Poland.
Kasia works in a variety of media, including painting, mixed media, digital graphics and installation. Her work includes strong use of repetition and habitual documenting and comments on socio-gender issues through visual memory recording. Her work is influenced by the Middle East, particularly by matters of everyday existence and the empowerment of local women in the UAE.
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You can see all 60 pieces from this project here.
Sharon Lindenfeld & Kasia Dzikowska talk about their work