Sin Titulos / Konsthall C

(6–28 februari 2021)

Text written by Ulrika Flink

“The exhibition SIN TÍTULOS begins with the project PaterFamilias (2018 ABF house, 2020 Detroit Gallery), an installation consisting of photocopies of documents issued in connection with the artist’s legal process in Peru to obtain sole custody of his child. The documents also describe the work of settling in Sweden linked to an ongoing migration process. Mercado-Roja’s work reflects the violence that institutions force women to undergo in lengthy evaluations that require money, time and emotional work to prove their worth and significance.

Rossana Mercado-Rojas is our first artist to participate in Konsthall C’s writing residency. The residence has given Rossana space and time to be able to read about and retextualize the projects she has done in recent years.

The installation in Centrifug collects stories and information from women living in Sweden who have either experienced gender-based violence or investigated it and question the silence and neutrality in traditional media, society and legislation. The silence makes these problems look like isolated issues rather than a system problem. The silence also makes one think about the type of violence that is important to address by the media, which topics and people are less relevant to take into account, the type of women that are included when talking about feminist rights, which women are left out and become targets for not only cruel domestic violence but also institutional violence.

Rossana Mercado-Rojas has compiled texts, photocopies and sounds based on the exchange of experiences and conversations with women she has met in Sweden. This material will be transferred to the showroom in an ongoing process where the installation is developed every day. The process begins on February 5 and ends on February 28. The audience will be able to follow how the work is transformed via a webcam connected to Konsthall C’s facebook.

For Mercado-Rojas, the installation is a platform for shared knowledge, a mind map that develops and changes as a parallel to how these situations affect and change our senses, our bodies and our collective body as a society. The installation becomes a document for links between the personal and the public, between personal stories that reflect the structures of society which in turn embody the core of patriarchal (and colonial) violence. Through this exchange of experiences, Rossana Mercado-Rojas makes the personal political, the individual experience becomes a pattern that reveals action (or passivity) from a society that, seen from foreign media, is famous for promoting gender equality and driven by a feminist agenda.

” Frente al poder no te empoderas. Frente al poder te rebelas”
“In the face of power you do not empower yourself. In the face of the power you rebel” – Maria Galindo

link to Konsthall C site https://www.konsthallc.se/program/sintitulos

Photos by: Konsthall C, Patricia Wallin and Sarai Alvarez

Silence has never protected us – Live Action – Feb 20th

with Sarai Alvarez and Patricia Wallin

With the help of music, voices, images and their own bodies, Rossana, Sarai and Patricia will interact with the documents and stories in the exhibition. With their own voices along with sound clips from Princess Jimenez Beltres’ spoken word “The Fatherland”, they will read, act, translate and add material to what is already in the room. In the process, their bodies become documents of violence and its historical wounds, but also resilience, joy and strength.

Rossana describes the action with the words: “The healing process is a generational journey. We have the right to be here. We are our own voice, this is a testimony of us here and now. ”

Artist Talk – February 26th

For the last days of the exhibition, additional elements in Rossana’s intervention were added, and the focus is on color and the reality-based story “Luz Maria” from Amalia Alvarez’s serial album Five Paperless Women’s Stories (2013). Alvarez is an artist, anti-racist activist and cartoonist who during his first time in Sweden met five women whose stories of vulnerability as “illegal” are depicted in the book. The stories of five undocumented women (2013) won the Grand Reader Award for 2013’s best comic book on bokcirklar.se.

More on Amalia´s work https://amaliaalvarez.wordpress.com/