Nurturing as an active Stance of Care and Resistance
(2025)
author(s): Asrafun Nahar Ruhin
published in: Research Catalogue, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
- Research document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2025
- Master Artistic Research
This research begins with memories of monsoon rains in my hometown, stray dogs disappearing after municipal “relocations,” and the recurring ache of loss. These personal moments ground a broader inquiry into nurturing as an active form of care and resistance. Positioned within artistic practice, nurturing emerges not as passive sentiment but as embodied engagement with both human and more-than-human worlds.
Structured through three interconnected acts—re-assembling, re-cognition, and refusal—the work examines how care often collapses under human-centered hegemony yet persists as a regenerative force in creative practice. Reflecting on feminist theorists such as María Puig de la Bellacasa and Gloria Anzaldúa, the study critiques the violence of anthropocentric agencies, where more-than-human beings are used as utility or resources. Through case studies of Dominique White’s shipwreck forms, Maksud Ali Mondal’s installations, and my own ritual work with termite mounds, this research explores how material practices can restore hidden labor, amplify muted voices, and resist extractive narratives.
This research embraces diverse complexity, uncertainty, and situated approaches above linear solutions. It focuses on practices like Bengali women’s ephemeral crafts and collective practices like the Gram Art Project to center marginalized ways of knowing. In doing so, it reimagines art as an ethico-political negotiation. It is an act of attunement to grief, land, and layered histories.
Rather than offering closure, this research stays with the trouble. Nurturing becomes a subtle, subversive, and ongoing dialogue within existing dominant hegemony. It allows working with exploited things, collective grief, and discluded concerns. In an era of clichéd ecological concern, nurturing is not a static ethic, but a resistance lies within contentious mundane rituals that fertilize a ruined soil.
Kotini joki – Betoniin piirtyvä hiljainen vastarinta ja vastarinnan performatiiviset ulottuvuudet
(2021)
author(s): Mari Mäkiranta
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Tutkimusekspositioni keskiössä ovat pohjoisen jokialueilla toimivan aktivistiryhmän voimalaitoksen betonisiin ja alumiinisiin seiniin vuosina 2019–2020 maalamat, joen valjastamista kritikoivat kirjoitukset ja kuvat sekä erityisesti niiden poistamiseen liittyvä prosessi. Maalausten – erityisesti niiden jättämien tahrojen ja poistojälkien – pohjalta rakentamissani valokuva- ja videoteoksissa vuorottelevat melu ja merkityksistä tiheä hiljaisuus. Voimalaitosmiljööseen tehdyt maalaukset kehottavat ja vaativat, kamppailevat alisteisten tai marginaaliin jäävien ryhmien, luonnonsuojelijoiden ja kala-aktivistien rinnalla pohjoisen jokien käyttötarkoituksista ja luontoarvoista. Maalausten signaali asettuu poikkiteloin hallitsevien sääntöjen, energiayhtiöiden intressien ja yhteiskunnallisten järjestysten kanssa. Myös valokuva- ja videoteokseni kantavat mukanaan kamppailuja – ironisia kannanottoja ja merkitseviä muotoja siitä materiaalisesta semiosiksesta, jossa kuvat ja kirjoitukset muokkaantuvat kerroksiksi, pinnoiksi, umpeen maalatuiksi ja poispestyiksi, hauraiksi ja huokoisiksi vastarinnan signaaleiksi.
Valokuvateokseni (Virtaavaa 2020; Sulava maali 1-8 2020; (Epäonnistunut)) Lohitapetti 2020) ovat merkitsevän muodon näkemistä siinä, missä toinen näkee töhryn, lian tai sotkun. Videoteokseni (Siivouspäivä 1–3, 2020) ovat saaneet inspiraationsa jokiaktivisteille annetusta kehotuksesta siivota jälkensä. Siivoaminen – kuten myös taideaktivismin harjoittelu – on videoteoksissani osa performatiivista prosessia, jossa sitoudun kulttuurisiin toistokäytänteisiin, kuten ”oikein” tekemiseen, mutta jossa jää tilaa myös toistokäytänteiden ironiselle haltuunotolle, leikille ja liioittelulle.
Luonnonympäristö, valjastettu joki, on täynnä ristiriitaisia merkityksiä: hiljaisuutta ja melua, ihmisen rakentamaa infrastruktuuria ja ”koskematonta” luontoa. Betoniin maalatut kirjoitukset ja kuvat ovat nekin konfliktisia – huokoisia ja hauraita, metelöiviä, hiljaisia. Hiljainen vastarinta ei kuitenkaan taivu kahtiajakoihin, aivan kuten ympäröivä pohjoinen luontokaan ei näyttäydy vastakohtaisuuksina. Kuten Veli-Pekka Lehtola ja Outi Autti (2019) kirjoittavat, hiljaisen vastarinnan tekojen motiivit vaihtelevat. Paikoin vastarinta jää pimentoon, ja aika ajoin sen signaalit on määrä tulla kuulluiksi ja nähdyiksi.
Café Imperial
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Eirini Sourgiadaki
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
When preparing for the dead, may we peep into the future?
In the broader geography of the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, we cook our coffee in the briki or cezve. Every region has its own variation, some heat up the water before adding the powder, some add spices, some make it thick, others thinner. And every person has their own variation as well. Coffee is something as personal as communal. Apart from the daily morning and evening consumption, we also share two uses of the coffee that are central of interest here: the coffee cup reading and the tradition of coffee drinking in funerals and memorials. Imagination and memory, future and past, the association with grief; and the unique timelines traced in each cup.
I think that it has been with me for years, the memory of my grandmothers, my mother’s morning ritual of cooking a light Greek coffee in a big cup. The familiarity of the Kafenio. And most importantly, community dynamics; sharing others, participating. Here I aspired to create a meeting space with people, artists or not, with whom I have met over the years and share the subtle fascination about this type of coffee and its rituals. Acknowledging the blood, oppression and displacement behind and around the product. The Cafe Imperial.
Hosting Togetherness as a Tool for Future Resistance. Research format Testing in Performance,
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Liz Rech
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Between 2012 and 2017, two cultural institutions and two universities in Hamburg collaborated in an experiment in the growing field of artistic and art-based research: Within the programmes Assemblies and Participation (2012-2014) and Performing Citizenship (2015-2017), they explored forms and formats of research in between art, academia and society. PABR (Participatory Art Based Research) understands research first and foremost as a triangular relation and interaction between art, science and society. This field of art-based research experiments with formats that involve not only artists and researchers, but also members of other communities such as children, neighbors, activists, experts, (non-)citizens. Artistic practices are thereby the crucial resources to change the relationship between research and the public and to create research practices in and for society. Fifty research projects have been designed and conducted so far to weave participatory research, participatory art, and cultural studies into a methodology that could be called the "Hamburg School" of participatory art-based research (Peters et al. 2020). In PABR, other forms of knowledge, which, for example, come from everyday practices, or exist as body or experiential knowledge, are valued as equal to academic or artistic knowledge.
Methodologically, the research setups that have been used by Liz Rech in the context of her performative research projects can be assigned to the field of PABR.
The text "Hosting Togetherness as a Tool for Future Resistance. Research format Testing in Performance" is part of the online publication on PABR https://pab-research.de.
Meaning Containers
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Stefania Castelblanco Perez
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The meaning containers project explores manifestations of social and cultural resistance in craft practices. The Meaning Containers are artisanal bags inspired by raffia palm objects from the Democratic Republic of Congo preserved in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. They are mainly inspired by a beanie initiation hat and amulet bags made with raffia palm. The meaning containers bags were part of a group exhibition called “Renegotiating Material Culture”, the result of a yearlong partnership between the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm and Research Lab at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. One of the main objectives of the research project consisted in exploring how the museum and its collection can inspire our contemporary craft and also how craft can explore the museum.
Resorting to the traditional Congolese Raffia palm weaving and beadwork techniques, these bags combine raffia palm with polypropylene and plastic bags used to store and transport cobalt and other precious minerals in the contemporary DRC. As a bag designer, I wanted to create bags using materiality and shape as communicative interfaces. Objects can be containers of social and cultural meaning and can tell the relationship that exists between communities and makers with their natural environment and social context. This presentation consists of a long abstract and photo diary of my research work.
City Walls
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Azar Kafaei
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Story of two urban spaces; a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut and a public housing project in Connecticut.
Story of two urban spaces; a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut and a public housing project in Connecticut.open exposition comments (0)