Fear and Adornment in Public Space

Colombia – South Africa – USA – Sweden – India

Fear & Adornment in Public Space – is the title of a larger contemporary art and craft project including workshops, site specific productions and community development conducted by the LAND Contemporary Art Practices (Sissi Westerberg and Veronica Wiman). By talking about Fear and Adornment we want to widen the perspectives of what adornment is and create awareness of the connection between fear and public space. Fear, or ways of conquering fear are put in relation to adornment– art for the body, decoration and ornamentation as well as architecture and art in the public space. What reasons are there for adornment, how are we affected by it and how can we use it? The project is an offspring of Veronica Wiman´s curatorial research and practice - Fear and Gender in Public Space www.genderandpublicspace.org

Other Venues

Nov 2007 Lugar a Dudas - contemporary art center in Cali, Colombia
http://www.lugaradudas.org/

Jan 2008 Witswatersrand School of Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa
http://web.wits.ac.za/

April 2008 University of San Francisco, USA
http://www.usfca.edu/

Jan 2009 Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India
http://srishti.ac.in/

The Assignment

Make a piece of jewellery for a specific site.

Choose a public place in the city where you, or someone else, experience fear or feel unsafe.

Make a proposal for a jewellery piece for the site. The adornment could be for wearing at the site or for adorning the site itself. It could be for a particular situation, person, time of day etc... The piece can be a tool, a solution, a protection or a means to conquer fear, but it could also be something that represents the fear or is a reaction to it.

Sergels Torg


I asked my friend at which site in Stockholm she felt most unsafe, and immediatly the answer was Sergels Torg.
I asked her why and her reply was that the envoriment was so energydraining.
The colourless and grey enviroment, the people that you always see at the square; drug addicts, homeless people and all the criminality.
Everything in that place is misery and it gives me anxiety to me, she said.

1 comment:

Sissi said...

Får mig att tänka på: mönstret, det gråa (men ochå de vita bitarna vända upp mot skyn - vad speglas i dem?), pelarna, en smal kille med munkjackan uppdragen över huvudet med snoddarna hängande.
Undrar hur man bäst skulle smälta in på den här platsen. Om man blev en del av den, skulle det göra mindre ont då?