UNFINISHING

To create an object is to combine our own energies in objects – objects that have never existed before. There is a subtle transcendence in the manifestation of creative energy, which is why the exhibition space itself can be understood as a kind of sacred space.

One of the important tasks of art is to make us realise that we are not only spectators of our inner world, but that we belong to it – as well as to each other; therefore, it has a particularly important task of restoring community. Within the framework of the Unfinishing project, we focus on dismantling the misconception that an artwork is just something to look at.

A work of art is there to make us realise that we have something to „do” with it, something to recognise and do. The work of art does not belong to the artist, the exhibition space or the museum, but to everyone. The aim of the project is therefore to create a communal experience which, through the medium of visual art, leads to this insight – and to the creation of actions beyond the exhibition space, the first steps towards renewing our broken human relationships. The exhibition is in two parts, communicated through a description. The first part is a 4 x 2 metre stretched canvas with thread lilies woven into it. The recipient is given the opportunity to pull a piece of yarn from one of the lilies, as if to ‘tear one off’, and then to give the piece of yarn to a person of his choice, either present or outside the exhibition space, and tie it on his hand as a sign of belonging. The lily is associated with purity, with immaculate integrity, with the Virgin Mary, who is the finite manifestation of God (the cosmos, the infinite).

Mary’s counterpart in Hinduism is the Maya, the primordial unity, the prima materia, which, when divided, becomes things. The lily blossoms on the canvas are manifestations of a reality without aliveness, frozen into things, which can only be released in one way: by becoming alive again – and this can only happen through the actions of the receiver. In the second part of the exhibition, the visitor is asked to write on a side wall why he or she has chosen the person on whose hand he or she wishes to tie the lily thread of his or her choice. Leave this one sentence in „exchange” for the „flower”. In this way, the lilies pass from form to form and are transformed into renewed relationships, feelings and memories. A complex participatory work of art brings visitors together in a great shared experience.