Weaving time

Weaving Time: Gender, Labor, and Disrupted Chronologies

Jelena Micić – Ebru Kurbak – Maria Walcher – Miriam Bajtala 

Curator: Deniz Güvensoy for Vienna Artweek 

8- 15 November , GALERIE Peter Gaugy

Opening: 7th November

The exhibition Weaving Time explores the conceptual framework of this year’s Vienna ArtWeek, Facing Time from a feminized perspective. The modernist understanding of time centers on progress, growth, and capital accumulation through a linear trajectory. According to capitalist production logic, time cannot be monetized in terms of feminized labor. Time spent on care work is often seen as wasted and lost. How do women* interpret the concept of time? How do they weave personal memories, traumas, and daydreams into this linear pattern? In this exhibition, artworks addressing gendered labor, ephemerality, the body, migration, spatial memory, and oblivion come together. Four artists reveal an alternative perception of time, encompassing a palimpsest of juxtaposed memories, a cyclical movement of repeating patterns, embodied traumas, the resilience in the temporary and fragile, and the visualization of the invisible labor and lost time.

We are all members of the ‘Burnout Society,’ as described by philosopher Byung-Chul Han. In this system, where time seems to pass faster than it should, we are compelled to create ‘the best version of ourselves,’ compete with others, and live a life oriented around success and performance. As a consequence of patriarchal mechanisms, the current situation has a deeper impact on women* due to the tasks assigned to them and their naturalized roles. Women* often have the burden of carrying two conflicting personas: one is an aggressively productive, goal-oriented self, where there is no space for contemplation, slowing down, or self-reflection. The other is the woman, who society expects—caring, vulnerable, and empathetic. The tension and crisis created by this dichotomy lead many women to seek support through popular New Age spirituality that preaches to reclaim the so-called ‘feminine energy’. ‘

‘Feminine energy’ is a concept that attributes ‘the being mode’, receptivity, intuition, fluidity, and creativity to a distinctly feminine essence. In contrast, ‘masculine energy’ is associated with qualities such as focus, determination, and goal orientation, which respond to the demands of the capitalist system. 

The essentialist narrative around feminine/masculine duality made me think about how ‘feminine energy’ relates to the concept of time. Living in a rush to keep everything together, do women have any ‘time’ to reclaim their so-called feminine side? Can we speak about a feminized concept of time that counterpoints the dominant masculine values of productivity, and progress, which erase women’s reproductive labor? Is it possible to conceptualize an alternative perspective of time to its modernist interpretation, centered on growth, and profit through a linear trajectory? How is time gendered and how does this gendering often lead to marginalization?

A cyclical conception of time is an alternative to a linear progression from past to future, associated with Western modernism. It is in accordance with the natural rhythms of the body, hormonal cycles that repeat every month. It is process-oriented in contrast to the goal-driven approach of linear time. This perception of time views the past as a palimpsest of juxtaposed memories rather than a linear progression toward a specific end. 

If we want to counter the masculine conception of time, an alternative would be the perspective of time that acknowledges how bodies store traumas, the resilience found in the transient and fragile, and embraces the journey rather than the outcome. 

The exhibition aims to answer through the artworks of four women*. How do women* artists deal with the exhausting pace of today’s world? How do they perceive time? An important concept related to the non-linearity of time is the palimpsest. A palimpsest is an ancient manuscript from which the former text is washed off for reuse. It is used as a metaphor to comprehend memory as a site, that is continuously erased and rewritten. A narrative based on the notion of palimpsest emphasizes the multilayered nature of the memory, which contrasts with the conventional methodologies of history. Instead of a chronological order, we observe a loop of erasure and rewriting, where past experiences are reconstructed in every act of remembering. 

It is possible to observe this approach in Miriam Bajtala’s video installation, In the Bodies. The artist reconstructs her past as a palimpsest, a multi-layered manuscript that juxtaposes different moments of life, mixing emotions, dreams, subjective experiences, hearsays from her family, and objective facts. She also refers to the palimpsestic qualities of space. Palimpsest is often used in architectural theory and urban studies because the memory of space is multilayered and anachronic. Her work questions the possibility of having an objective approach when the research material is the personal experience, and the home becomes the field of study.

Miriam Bajtala reconstructs the places where she lived, in a poetic, minimalist, and abstract visual language. In that dreamy atmosphere, objects are enacted by human bodies, and actors portray herself and her family, depicting the turning points of her life. The bodily performances affirm how bodies store and manifest the trauma. The flight from a communist state, the social shame of being the other, the alienation, the struggle to be accepted, abuse, the invisible and underestimated migrant labor, and her story of becoming an artist as she sees art as a meditative experience, in which she can lose track of time. The artist shows evidence of how the past reshapes the present in each act of remembering. 

Jelena Micić combines color abstractions with post-conceptual and political themes. Micić’s earlier installations referenced childhood in Yugoslavia, and experiences as a care worker in Austria to support the art studies. Jelena Micić transforms piles of everyday items, such as cotton swabs, and colorful fruit nets into large-scale installations. These disposable plastic materials, carefully categorized and stacked by color are references to the living conditions of the working class, for whom using sustainable material is not an option. They evoke domesticity and housework, merging the personal with the political, and high culture with banality. 

The childhood food allergy prevented the artist from eating colored candy ever since. As the artist engaged with the sociopolitical and economic implications of color systems, Micić was inspired by own biological sensitivity to colors. In this performative work, titled You Can If You Dare Micić conducts ongoing digestion experiments by eating a candy of a specific color for a set of periods to find out which colors the body continues to react to. The candies are classified in plastic boxes, reminiscent of medicine cabinets. Micić’s performance focused on gathering statistical data referring to scientific experiments. The photographs and watercolors serve as time-based evidence of the experiment. 

Ebru Kurbak explores the intersection between a time-consuming practice, lacework, and time-based media technologies. In her artistic research, thread is the central material, connecting two gendered domains: male-dominated media technologies and traditional crafts such as embroidery and lacework, often considered women’s work. The Chrono-lace Studies, as the title suggests, reference the passage of time, focusing on the (lost) time and labor of women as repetitive lace patterns are produced in a meditative practice. The piece challenges the cinematic notion of time, where events proceed linearly from past to present. The intricate, repetitive patterns of the lacework conceal the passage of time, revealing its non-linearity and offering the female perspective. 

Maria Walcher explores the relationship between mobility and labor, precarious working conditions, and social structures. The artist playfully creates experimental connections across different times and spaces, engaging with contexts such as site-specific interventions, performative installations, and public artworks. Time is a repeated theme in many of her works. For instance, in the performative, site-specific installation Jacques, she invites passersby to write down things they have forgotten.In the exhibition, she presents her work Knotten II, a porcelain knot. Here, the artist focuses on the act of forgetting rather than remembering, which is more commonly seen in artworks related to memory. She references the gesture of tying a knot as a reminder not to forget something. The fragility of porcelain symbolizes the transience of memories, no matter how strongly the knot is tied.  In another work, Tempo, she traces the history of the handkerchief brand ‘Tempo’, which means time in Italian. The evolution from embroidered cloth versions to disposable handkerchiefs highlights the invisible labor of the workers who produced ‘time’ in the factories and the changing pace of our consumption habits.

Deniz Güvensoy, 2024