TOUCH AGAIN EXHIBITION Performance for CERTEZA: LA INTRODUCCIÓN 2022 at COLECCIÓN SOLO | performers @heyitsanothergirl @amorprojects @sariitamarco @_pecadocarnal @marionajc @elenanelee @laurag.carrasco @andrepebu @anafmelero @lunasanchzz @lauraindigo @ro_asecas @cuentosrosales | PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO BY @ZOMBIMORENO
nota de prensa press release
Touch again, por Alex Hug
Four textile sculptures crafted of found fabrics come to life in Touch Again. Created by the artist Alex Hug (Alex Henkes, Madrid, 1989), this performance completes the presentation Certainty_the introduction.
This performance is an invitation to recover physical contact in an age characterised by digital communications. Alex Hug’s sculptures, known as Hug Stations, are soft panels of numerous arms which, thanks to a cast of performers, literally reach out to spectators. Colour, texture and the spoken word come together to trace an emotional journey for the audience through rage, fear, sadness and relief.
“Lockdown made it much worse, but it’s something I’d noticed even before the pandemic,” says Hug, referring to a present day characterised by touch starvation. With her artistic practice is grounded in sustainability, Hug creates her soft sculptures using preloved clothing and conceives them as archives of memory. They are timelines filled with information and experiences which connect the craftspeople, wearers and users who have come into contact with their fibres.
Each work references a different emotion, expressed in the choice of materials and colours. It’s OK to Feel Red (Hug Station #4) connects with rage, while The Trap of Black (Hug Station #5) explores the paralysing nature of fear. I Need a Hug When I Feel Blue (Hug Station #3) addresses sadness, while relief or the sense of having overcome adversity is contained within Hope in Pink is Contagious (Hug Station #2).
The spoken word completes the experience of Touch Again. Repeated and overlapped phrases form a soundtrack to each piece, a continuous murmur only decipherable if audience members step closer. “Everything’s going to be ok,” whispers a moving sculpture, as a stranger offers a reassuring hug.
COAT FOR FIVE, por Alex Hug
A textile sculpture is born through upcycling: a response to an increasingly divided and strained society that focuses on highlighting differences, rather than on unified understanding and strength. The work is composed of textile pieces that have the ability to assemble and connect, to create a single textile sculpture that unites and intertwines what is normally separated. The work is a superskin that houses a five-headed, ten-legged and two-armed superbeing, brought to life by five intertwined bodies. The superbeing is created through the embrace of the performers, an entity that appears before us as a symbol of union, understanding, compassion, humanity, balance and harmony, as a reminder that we all form and depend on the same world; under the same sky, the same shelter, or the same embrace.