Denizen
Bachelor Graduation Exhibition
2023
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Denizen, 2023, stoneware, 73x56.3cm, Paradox, 2023 stoneware, 73x56.3cm, Escape of the Amateur, 2023, stoneware, 73x56.3cm, I was Never Good at Drawing, 2023, stoneware 70x56.3cm.
What if it is not a question of what is art, but a question of who gets to create art?
“How can the same croquie drawings be considered lackluster one day, and a sign that you have found your artistic expression five years later? There is a paradox in the art community today with inclusion and exclusion. As the field is flooded by amateurs, the art gets institutionalized, exclusive, whilst there is a lack, and a need for diversity and inclusion. The institution acts as a wall or a protective embankment for the professional against the ”amateur”. I wanted to create a shape that was both including and excluding to mirror this phenomenon and defy rules and question hierarchies by using the relief as a format.
As my figures climb the wall, I can’t help but feel like I have become part of it. Part of the shield against the amateur. In many ways the walls that I have built and defaced, tell the story of my own creative development as well as the irony of the art institutions today. Looking around me in art school is like looking in a funhouse mirror. So many, slightly distorted versions of myself walking around. There is a huge paradox in the art community, where we speak of the lack of inclusivity and diversity in the art field, all the while the walls that you have to climb to enter into said community are getting higher and higher. I contemplate over what has changed, because the figures in the drawings have not. I suppose what has changed is I.
We all enter the institution as aliens and the ones that make it out on the other side come out as denizens (denizen being an alien allowed certain rights in their adopted country/that have successfully adapted to a foreign environment).”
Excerpt from Jenny Hamrells Bachelor thesis.
Bachelor Graduation Exhibition
2023
Denizen, 2023, stoneware, 73x56.3cm, Paradox, 2023 stoneware, 73x56.3cm, Escape of the Amateur, 2023, stoneware, 73x56.3cm, I was Never Good at Drawing, 2023, stoneware 70x56.3cm.
What if it is not a question of what is art, but a question of who gets to create art?
“How can the same croquie drawings be considered lackluster one day, and a sign that you have found your artistic expression five years later? There is a paradox in the art community today with inclusion and exclusion. As the field is flooded by amateurs, the art gets institutionalized, exclusive, whilst there is a lack, and a need for diversity and inclusion. The institution acts as a wall or a protective embankment for the professional against the ”amateur”. I wanted to create a shape that was both including and excluding to mirror this phenomenon and defy rules and question hierarchies by using the relief as a format.
As my figures climb the wall, I can’t help but feel like I have become part of it. Part of the shield against the amateur. In many ways the walls that I have built and defaced, tell the story of my own creative development as well as the irony of the art institutions today. Looking around me in art school is like looking in a funhouse mirror. So many, slightly distorted versions of myself walking around. There is a huge paradox in the art community, where we speak of the lack of inclusivity and diversity in the art field, all the while the walls that you have to climb to enter into said community are getting higher and higher. I contemplate over what has changed, because the figures in the drawings have not. I suppose what has changed is I.
We all enter the institution as aliens and the ones that make it out on the other side come out as denizens (denizen being an alien allowed certain rights in their adopted country/that have successfully adapted to a foreign environment).”
Excerpt from Jenny Hamrells Bachelor thesis.