Within These Lines I Operate | Evy Jokhova

About

Using the grid as a conceptual framework for social interaction and the role of women in domestic architecture Jokhova creates a site for reflection and engagement that questions our understanding of space and how our bodies interact within the domestic environment.

The gallery space is transformed into an immersive/atmospheric experience where the artist creates a story line and a visual game for the audience to draw their own versions of this narrative by adding their personal references and archetypes to it. Thus building a communal sentiment and history through shared references and an individual’s willingness to engage.

Drawing oblique references to architecture, women’s labour in the domestic environment, and body memory ‘Within these lines I operate’ opens a field of enquiry into how we gather as a society and the shared symbols that culturally bind us. The exhibition create spaces that feels familiar, like a home, rife with potential for collectivity or contemplation. In this way, the exhibition evokes our need for common social narrative (rituals): common ground through which we might find ways to act together or respond to each other.

The grid itself is not a place where you would like to surrender but is instead envisaged as an ‘everywhere’ in the human realm. Cities, patterns, the way we organise in our modern world, all have a tangible relation to the grid. We live inside grids and interact with the structure throughout our life often without paying any special notice of it. Grids shape our social relations, our body, gestures and the way we move within space.

Evy Jokhova creates an atmosphere where the audience is encouraged to question these lines and forms, observe the social connotations they have, sense the place they may have in their life, and then attempt to surrender by creating new meanings.

Text by Aude Vignac

Evy Jokhova is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in the dialogue between social anthropology, architecture, philosophy and art. Working with sculpture, installation, drawing, film, performance and sound on a project-by-project basis, she investigates the invention of tradition and how society and the body can be altered through architectural construction, with reference to the post-Cartesian ontological question of being in space (M. Heidegger, J-L. Nancy, Ian James, M. Foucault) and the relationship between building, body and mind (Bertrand Russell, Bill Hillier, Vitruvius). Her projects are often supported by travel, research, anthropological fieldwork and interviews.

Born in Switzerland to a Russian father and an Estonian/Dagestani mother, Jokhova grew up in Vienna, Austria. As a child she spent a significant amount of time traveling to see family in Estonia, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. This multi-cultural background, exposure to diverse social and political structures in altering states of flux and stability and the complex relationships between the perceived, the imagined and the accepted norms inform her work. Themes of human co-existence and cooperation are also often referenced.

https://evyjokhova.co.uk

Opening Thursday, October 24th 2019, from 7pm with the performance of the artist dancer Patricia Keleher.

October 24th, 2019 | November 29th, 2019
Tuesday to Friday : 2pm-7pm
Saturday : 2pm-6pm

More informations: www.focolisboa.com

FOCO
Rua da Alegria, 34
1250-007 Lisboa