Despite everything, Valentina Karga invites us to be well at
Kunstmuseum Bochum
The Kunstmuseum Bochum is an art gallery designed by Danish
architects Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert, celebrated for their designs for the
Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen. In Germany, their design also lets light into a
modernist building with architectural clarity, which proves helpful for
Valentina Karga’s current exhibition, with the artist trying to allow a space
of relaxation, contemplation & de-stress to help visitors deal with climate
anxiety. Alison Hugill went along to find that to deal with our future,
Karga asks us to also look to the past.
In a video essay at the entrance to her exhibition WELL BEINGS at Kunstmuseum Bochum, Valentina Karga frames the narrative of the show by introducing the work of Marija Gimbutas, the late Lithuanian archaeologist. Gimbutas’ publications in the 1970s and 80s unearthed evidence of matrilineal cultures in Eastern and Central Europe through discoveries of its neolithic and Bronze age goddess figurines. However, her work was often maligned and subject to campaigns to discredit it as “myth-making,” as she attempted to delineate a largely peaceful, pre-patriarchal society, and to insist on its scientific validity through the evidence of its goddess-worshipping artefacts.
In the video, Karga quite literally walks us through these historical findings and their implications for political thinking today, as she strolls through urban streets with self-made clay interpretations of the figurines held in her out-stretched hand, speaking to us in a smooth, ASMR-style voice that mirrors the tone and aesthetic of the show about to unfold.
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The “well beings” in question here emerge in the form of various idiosyncratic post- or more-than-human creatures drawn on the walls or hanging around as velvety cushions in the exhibition space. They resemble the prehistoric goddess shapes we saw in Gimbutas’ discoveries – their breasts and hips often exaggerated – but also take on a wholly distinct, creaturely design that speaks to Karga’s gender- and species-fluid reinterpretation of this second wave feminist theory.
Like Gimbutas’ goddesses, their faces are abstract, but their suggestion of a certain hybridity propels them into the present, or even a speculative future. Working against binary distinctions between male and female, as well as questioning the well-worn nature-culture divide, Karga rather champions an “omnidirectional” approach that considers the constant acceptance and integration of nature’s “otherness.”
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One of the most compelling things about WELL BEINGS – which was first shown at MK&G Hamburg in 2023, since travelling to other German art institutions – is that any tendency it might have to didacticism is immediately cut through by its appeal to surrender, to rest, and to really dwell in the more sombre ideas it introduces. Facing the video essay is a mattress on a slightly raised platform, a heavily weighted blanket draped across its surface. Behind it, a pair of geometrically accented sofas invite us to sit in front of another video work, DOOM SCROLL (2023).
This work, perhaps the most telling in the show, is a 17-minute long mash-up of distressing climate and disaster news posted on social media. The doom-scroll is periodically interrupted by fake ads for wellness products – such as body warmers and plush toys, which can also be found scattered within the exhibition space – in which the artist demonstrates their uses while overlaying text describes their benefits: “Cuddling soothes the nervous system and improves immune system function” and “the pressure of weighted blankets puts your nervous system into ‘rest’ mode.” At first, the content of the video feels incongruent in the space, but that incongruency itself reveals a harsh reality.
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In the two years since Karga created DOOM SCROLL, the content of social media newsfeeds has changed so drastically for the worse that it’s almost difficult not to question the levels of “doom” presented here. In fact, the hyper-normalisation of images of these kinds – of floods, wildfires, war-torn and heavily-bombarded communities – interspersed with upbeat trending recipes and wellness ads, makes this particular display feel almost innocuous, overly familiar. Perhaps that’s the critical crux of the show, however subtly it is delivered.
At the risk of over-aestheticising the apocalypse, Karga brings her “well beings” to life in both a hopeful gesture and a tongue-in-cheek indictment of our present moment. It’s increasingly obvious that no amount of wellness products can save us from the inevitability of certain forms of social and environmental destruction, so what do we gain from cuddling up with soft creatures and contemplating hybridity?
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A possible answer is offered in the final film encountered in the show, ADAPTION (2023). Projected across two walls in a darkened room, it displays a collaborative LARP (Live-Action Role Play), in which participants physically explore the dissolution of society as we know it and enact a re-building based on new principles of co-existence with nature. Simplistic in its parameters, the LARP comes together as a poetic choreography that points to the necessarily communal origins of any new society. Limbs entangled, the individuals begin to move almost as one, leaning on one another for support. Communal care inevitably trumps individual design solutions for failing mental health.
Regardless of whether one finds it a too-tidy conclusion to a decidedly messy tale, it’s clear that the artist isn’t ready to abandon hope yet. With WELL BEINGS, Karga insists that it’s still possible for us to learn lessons in survival and adaptation from our non-human counterparts, perhaps even more so if we attune ourselves to the nature- and peace-loving impulses of Gimbutas’ goddesses.
