Graduation 2021

Reconfigured chairs

Chairs are the most obvious and functional tools in everyday lives. I cannot help but engage with chairs, especially when they catch my attention as rejected items on the street. I started picking them up off the street, and after a while, several questions arose. Why had they been discarded? Where and how had they existed before? How long will their lifespan be? Where would these chairs have gone if I hadn’t picked them up? But also: who am I to give them an afterlife?
To examine these found objects more closely, I employed the method of “reverse engineering” to deconstruct the chairs in a systematic order. Sometimes I intuitively rearrange and re-establish clay elements according to my personal taste. Through my interventions, the chairs lose their functionality, and a new kind of sculpture comes into being. I even wonder if and how my reconfigured chairs will find a new “rationale” for a new existence.
One day I noticed that these reconfigured chairs resemble me in a way. Looking back on my life, I feel like I’ve always existed in some kind of liminal space. In relationships between people, I often act as a buffer or mediator who is on neither side and is trying to exist in the blurry, transitional zone in between. Every once in a while, I have a vision in which my body is in the real world, but my mind is outside of reality. I keep looking for a place to hide where I won't be exposed, afraid to be assigned to a fixed position. Yet, I constantly hesitate – in despair about my own position in society.
These artefacts are neither chairs nor sculptures. They are neither well-designed products nor great works of art. These are objects that seek to survive their in-between-ness. It might well be that my chairs constitute a self-portrait.

During the Graduation 2021 the academy spaces transform into exhibition spaces for the graduating students.
The project spaces are also being used for this.
Ceramics graduate Sunwoo Jung presented part of her work in project space FL 101.

www.sunwooz.com

photos by Jordi de Vetten

The Graduation Show 2021 presented the work of around 170 graduates. They have completed their four to five year Bachelor Fine Arts & Design at one of the fourteen departments.Here) you can find the photographs of their presentations.