{"id":16112,"date":"2020-04-17T13:19:17","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T12:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonnierskonsthall.se\/?post_type=bonnier_exhibition&p=16112"},"modified":"2026-03-07T17:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T16:09:08","slug":"standing-with-eva-mag","status":"publish","type":"bonnier_exhibition","link":"https:\/\/bonnierskonsthall.se\/en\/utstallning\/eva-mag\/standing-with-eva-mag\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing with \u00c9va Mag"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Standing with \u00c9va Mag<\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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By Theodor Ringborg, Artistic Director Bonnier Konsthall<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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A recurring theme throughout \u00c9va Mag\u2019s work is the question of standing. Quite obviously this is the topic of the performance turned video Stand up, I said stand up!<\/em> (2014). In it, the artist attempts to get a life-size clay body to stand, which is of course impossible. Its clay legs buckle and fold at each attempt as Mag continues to struggle with the lifeless body-shaped lump. After a while it becomes ludicrous, almost funny, yet also exceedingly painful. For each of Mag\u2019s attempts, the clay body becomes more animated, more \u201creal,\u201d and the failure to stand all the more distressing for a viewer to see.<\/p>\n

There is an intriguing variety in the language around standing. While one can \u201ctake a stand,\u201d one can also \u201cnot stand it.\u201d This is to say that in standing there is something to learn about protest and about bodies and their abilities. One stands up to what one cannot stand. At the same time, one must be able to \u201cstand it\u201d\u2014as in life and the world\u2014to \u201cstand up to it.\u201d Another way to put this is in the form of a question once posed by the Korean- American writer and artist Johanna Hedva, \u201cHow do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can\u2019t get out of bed?\u201d To \u201cnot stand it\u201d would here be not being able to get out of bed. To \u201cstand up to it\u201d would be the brick through the window.<\/p>\n

Not being able to \u201cstand it\u201d has a set of causes. We might call it the world. The cause is how it is organized. Standing up to it would then be taking a stand against a system within which we are all meant to align at a point when we feel we don\u2019t align. This is when we can\u2019t, as it were, get out of bed so as to enter and be part of it. It begs the question what \u00c9va Mag is really doing to this body? Is she helping it? Or is she violently forcing it up on its feet? It is the friction between these two positions that runs through Mag\u2019s work, and that has allowed for her to develop an artistic practice that explores collectivity, individuality, labor, and bodies with and against the world.<\/p>\n

\u00c9va Mag\u2019s exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall – which is the artist\u2019s first major solo exhibition – presents a continuation of Mag\u2019s inquiries into the workings of the world and how to work in it. In the exhibition we can discern two strands. One strand concerns the potential of the collective, presented in a new film produced out of a performance that took place during Performa 19. In this film we see ten people over the duration of several days creating, toiling with, and partly destroying ten clay bodies.<\/p>\n

They work together, somewhat aimlessly, yet the togetherness
\nof their work gives it a particular direction. The other strand deals with Mag\u2019s father, who over decades has come to amass an indescribable amount of material and scrap on a patch of land outside Stockholm. His solitary work to keep and organize all these things\u2014from plastic chairs, pieces of metal in a variety of sizes, machines, hand-saws, and wood\u2014is the subject of a piece where Mag transports all of these things to Bonniers Konsthall to be further organized and re-organized for the duration of the exhibition. Thus, Bonniers Konsthall becomes a place for work, for sorting these things, alongside the potential of collective thinking and performance.<\/p>\n

Fascinated by the question of standing in terms of standing up to the world and not standing it, I ask myself: is there a brick somewhere amongst all the clutter at Bonniers Konsthall?<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Utst\u00e4llning<\/p>\n\n\n\n