curatorial text of Magda Grzybowska
Jasmin Schaitl’s artistic journey has undergone a remarkable transformation in the past decade. Originally known as a visual artist and experimental performer, Jasmin has evolved into a facilitator guiding individuals on personal mind-journeys into the realms of memory. Within this transformation, she offers practices for recalling personal memories that carry specific images or shapes.
Her practice involves creating frames that support the retrieval process, making it easier to reexperience these images and shapes. Jasmin provides a tangible material that can shape the intangible nature of memory through our own hands. As this happens, accompanying thoughts are released and encouraged to be spoken and shared.
Central to Jasmin’s creative endeavors are the hands, particularly the palms, which serve as key motifs. They not only shape but also act as tools for the sensual cognition of reality through touch. This tactile connection, perhaps more intensely than the often-emphasized sense of sight, binds our imagination to the real world. Thus, in Jasmin’s works, references to haptics become significant. Haptics is primal and, at the same time, connected to numerous areas of the human body. Through haptics, the human body can ‘sense itself’ in multiple spatiotemporal realities simultaneously.
The reality that Jasmin explores in her works extends beyond the present moment. While the ‘here and now’ serves as the starting point, the artist consistently guides us away from this immediate reality. However, it becomes evident that within this ‘here and now,’ a mental journey is conceivable, involving an awareness of one’s own body—its movement, shape, or texture. A crucial aspect of this journey is an encoded image, thought, or feeling from the past. Simultaneously, it serves as a key to naming the current state and anticipating future developments. This interweaving of once-now-then forms the basis for exploring themes of corporeality and spirituality.
The HANDS ON exhibition, and other projects by Jasmin Schaitl, heavily rely on the artist’s voice as a crucial medium. Reproduced in the gallery space, it takes on a tangible form that challenges the dominance of visual qualities. This puts viewers in touch with the artist through an ephemeral yet powerful element. In this context, hearing becomes another activated sense with qualities that contribute to the contemplative experience which Jasmin tirelessly urges us to pursue.
The exhibition HANDS ON is almost entirely created by its visitors. It is a record of a multi-faceted process involving diverse activities in various spaces, engaging the audience. At the same time it invites them to further co-create the exhibition by participating in the offered tasks. Such an invitation to interact turns the exhibition into more than just an expression of an artistic work; it fosters a sense of shared ownership, empowerment of the visitors, which leads to full participation and openness.
EXIT Gallery
24.02. – 29.03.2024
co-curated by Pawel Czekanski and Magda Grzybowska
with the kind support of BMKOES, and Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design Wroclaw
Jasmin Schaitl 